


Blame it on my wild heart

by longnationalnightmare



Category: Bon Appétit Test Kitchen RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, First Time, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:07:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21839500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longnationalnightmare/pseuds/longnationalnightmare
Summary: Claire’s barely been home a day before she finds out about the breakup.
Relationships: Brad Leone/Claire Saffitz
Comments: 87
Kudos: 440
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Blame it on my wild heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annakovsky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annakovsky/gifts).

> now that it won't give the game away, i can say a) infinite thank yous to drunktuesdays & kalpurna for cheering/bullying/betaing right up to the deadline, i truly don't wanna contemplate where i would've ended up without your help, and b) it was just the greatest joy in the world to write this for you, kovsky, even though i often wanted to ask your opinion about something and couldn't, which sucked. happy yuletide!

Claire’s barely been home a day before she finds out about the breakup.   
  
Molly, who’s been hanging around her parents’ house for most of the month already, comes over to catch her up on the first few weeks of summer, and she’s not even _talking_ about Brad, actually—she’s telling some story about about a lighthouse party she and Rachel Karten crashed recently—when suddenly: “—but Sarah wasn’t even _there_!” Molly says, brandishing a pair of tongs at Claire. They’re grilling out on the back porch; Claire’s dad isn’t on the Cape this week, and her mom’s at an APCC happy hour. It’s just past sundown, and fireflies are starting to blink on way out across the water. “She’s been in, like, Montana or something ever since she and Brad broke up. So then _I _told _Greg—_”  
  
Claire shouldn’t say anything. It would be better to let Molly finish the story, ask the question later, offhandedly, so she might actually get away with it. Instead: “Since—wait, what?”  
  
“Since she and Brad—oh,” Molly says, and drops a sausage on the grill before shooting Claire a look. “You didn’t hear?”   
  
“When did they—they broke up?” Claire feels flustered for no reason. She tries to cover it by picking up the bug spray and stepping away to spritz her arms again.   
  
“Oh, is that citronella candle _not_ actually working?” Molly says. “Like I told you it wouldn’t?”  
  
“And I told _you_, I just like the way it smells.” The sun hasn’t been down long enough yet for the humidity to lift and Claire feels flushed even with the cool air coming in off the water. She flexes her bare toes against the grass.  
  
“You really didn’t know?”   
  
“No, Molly, I really didn’t know,” Claire says. “Not that… whatever. Is he okay?”   
  
“_Brad_?” Molly says. She sounds genuinely puzzled. “I mean, I don’t know, he’s still just Brad.”  
  
“It’s not a crazy question,” Claire says. “They dated for like four years.”  
  
“I guess,” Molly says, but raises the tongs again in surrender when Claire shoots her a look, then closes the grill. “Let’s have a beer,” she says.  
  
Inside, Claire chops some chives for the potato salad while Molly raids the fridge, resisting the urge to ask again. “You know,” Molly says, rummaging through the junk drawer for a bottle opener, “you’d probably be in the loop about this kind of stuff if you ever answered your texts. Or if you’d, like, come _visit_ me during the year, like I’ve asked approximately seven billion times.”  
  
Molly has asked Claire to come visit before. She’s threatened to come visit Claire, too: _I’m gonna show up outside your dorm with a boombox, WATCH ME_. But Molly has tons of friends at Skidmore and they’re always doing _something—_Molly posts about a zillion Insta stories a week. So Claire’s never felt too bad about brushing Molly off when, anyway, she has a zillion things to do too: classes to go to, tests to study for. When she tries to picture herself visiting Molly, Molly introducing Claire as “her summer friend,” she feels awkward and certain that everyone else would feel awkward too. Molly thinks she wants Claire to visit; she doesn’t really.   
  
Claire doesn’t mention any of that. “I answer my texts,” she says as she scrapes chives off the cutting board. “I _do_,” she adds, feeling petulant, when Molly just makes a face.   
  
“Whatever, nerd,” Molly says, pressing a beer into Claire’s hand.   
  
Claire’s not a big drinker but she’s not an idiot either: she takes a gulp.  
  
“Party girl,” Molly says. “Okay, fine. I’ll give you the 411.”  
  
Brad and Sarah, she says, broke up in February. No word on who dumped who, or on whether or not it was mutual—“I mean, not that he’d tell anyone anything, but seriously,” Molly says, “he seems, like, fine. I saw him last week. I think he grew another foot this year, it’s out of control. But I didn’t, like, ask.”  
  
“If he’s taller?”  
  
“If his feelings are hurt or whatever,” Molly says. “I mean, you know how he is. He just sails right along.”  
  
Claire thinks it’s more complicated than that—she honestly does—but she knows better than to say that to Molly. “Yeah, I guess,” she says instead.   
  
Brad and Sarah have been together since Claire was a freshman in high school. They’ve been together _forever_. She can barely remember a time when he wasn’t…taken, she guesses, even though thinking about it that way makes her feel kind of flushed and guilty. And he and Sarah had seemed happy, just as happy last summer as every summer before, so Claire’s always assumed—stupid, maybe, but whatever—that they’d get married. Brad’s that kind of guy, Claire thinks.   
  
Like she’s reading Claire’s mind, Molly clears her throat and says, “So….”  
  
“So what,” Claire says flatly, after a long pause.   
  
“Soooo,” Molly says, slow and clear, “maybe you’ll finally make a move on him?”   
  
“On _Brad_?” Claire says, wincing at the way it comes out. She’s trying to sound like she’s never thought about Brad like that in her whole life—she’s trying so _hard_—but Molly just rolls her eyes and says, “Yeah, Claire, when a guy and a girl like each other very very very very _very _much—”   
  
“We’re just friends,” Claire says. “We like each other a normal amount.”  
  
“Uh, no,” Molly says.  
  
“Uh, _yes_,” Claire says.   
  
“I’m sorry,” Molly says, “but you guys are, like, weird about each other. You know that, right? You do your whole—” She makes a face. “Whatever, you’re just, like, certifiably weird about each other. You know this.”  
  
So, fine: Claire doesn’t _not_ know what Molly’s talking about. She and Brad have… whatever. Claire’s always felt, a little embarrassingly, like she gets Brad in a way other people don’t; she’s always been a little proud of it, too. She doesn’t want _Molly_ noticing that, though. “We are _not_,” she says, and takes another sip of her beer, even though it’s dark and strong and honestly awful.  
  
Molly opens her mouth like she’s gonna argue the point some more, then shuts it again. “Whatever,” she says again. She sets her bottle down on the counter with a final little clink. “I’m just saying, you guys have a thing. It’s not breaking news.”  
  
“And I’m saying we don’t,” Claire says. She knows she’s letting herself sound way too annoyed, which is just blood in the water for Molly, but—“Brad has a—”  
  
“—had a—”  
  
“—girlfriend,” Claire continues, gritting her teeth. “And I…”  
  
“Yes?”   
  
“Nothing,” Claire says. “We just don’t have a thing, that’s all.”  
  
Molly rolls her eyes and tips her head forward, tying her hair up in a ponytail. “Okay,” she says. “But he’s on the open market now, so I’m just _saying_, if you wanted to go big game hunting...”  
  
“He’s not meat, Molly,” Claire says, needled, but Molly just scrunches her nose up and says, “I mean, kinda. Walking, talking, whistling meat.” Then she makes them go back outside to check on dinner.  
  
Later, after Claire’s mom gets home and asks Molly a million questions about college—after Molly makes Claire promise to go to the beach with her on Monday and heads out—Claire thinks about thinking about Brad some more, then doesn’t, then does, on and off, indecisive, for a long time. She sits out on the porch watching the water until the bug spray wears off and her ankles start itching so much that she has to go in.   
  
She’s known Brad since they were kids. His family lives here year-round; she’s hung out with him every summer since she was ten. And yeah, when she was younger, middle school or whatever—well, she thought Brad was cute because he _was_ cute—is cute—anyway, sure, she’d thought about it. Everyone thought about everyone at that age, testing it out, the idea of _like _liking someone. Brad had teased her a lot, but he’d been nice, too, nicer than anyone she’s ever known, pretty much, in the ways that count. He stayed nice, too. Dating Sarah didn’t change that, because _Sarah_ had been nice, the kind of person who’d go out of her way to have a conversation with almost anybody. And she and Brad had been…  
  
Well.   
  
Perfect, Claire’s pretty sure. They’d just been a perfect couple, easy in this way that made Claire’s teeth ache, sometimes, watching the two of them hanging out at the diner, Brad’s arm loose across her shoulders. Sarah was kind and even-keeled, sunny and friendly. She’d made Claire, who’s always on the verge of flipping out about something, feel like a whirling dervish—messy and miserable to be around in comparison. Sometimes, Claire had ended up in a big group at the beach with both of them. She’d never once seen them fight, even a little tiff. Sarah was that calm. She made Brad kind of calm too.   
  
Brad and _Claire_, on the other hand…  
  
Well, there is no Brad and Claire. And that middle school stuff—well, Claire’s not in middle school anymore, she thinks as she brushes her teeth, staring hard at her own face in the mirror. Her nose is already sunburnt and she’s still got dark circles under her eyes from finals week. She’s not a kid testing out the idea of having a crush on the first boy who ever made her laugh till she cried. She’s an adult. And as an adult, she feels like it sucks that Brad broke up with his girlfriend, actually, since he loved her and everything, and since she’s pretty sure he was gonna propose this year—if not this year, then next. She feels bad for him. She hopes he’s okay. That’s the thing she couldn’t say to Molly, who’d only smirk and use it as more proof that Claire’s, like, pining for Brad, that she’s been pining since the first time she saw him holding hands with Sarah: that Brad has feelings just like anybody else; that they’re strange and deep. That when he cares, he cares a _lot_.   
  
Brad is—_please stop thinking about this_, she tells herself futilely as she climbs into bed, but—he’s very loyal. Steadfast. _He’s not a _knight—okay, but kind of he is. She’s pretty sure he can’t ride a horse, even though he’s probably nearly as tall as one now, but all that chivalrous, bended knee, you-have-my-sword stuff: that’s Brad to a tee.   
  
So probably Sarah broke up with him, Claire figures. She can’t imagine—if she were with someone like Brad—but probably that’s it.   
  
_If it were me_, she thinks again, a little nonsensically—and then she’s imagining Brad astride an enormous clam, waving a sword around, charging out into the surf, to battle—and then she’s asleep.  
  
  
  
  
Summers on the Cape always feel slow until they don’t. In August, Claire knows, she’ll be breathless trying to cram in just one last everything: last sunset beach walk, last lobster roll, last sour cherry pie, latticed and steaming on the window sill, the whole house sweltering from the oven but—worth it. In June, though, just rolling out of bed to go meet Molly at the beach feels heroic. _Should I bring anything? _she texts on her way out to the car.   
  
_ICED!! CAFEEE! & snax _Molly sends back, along with a string of emojis Claire can’t remotely interpret.  
  
_This is why I don’t text you back_, she says, but she goes back into the house for grapes and crackers, and stops for the coffee too.   
  
Claire and Molly have been staking out the same spot on the same beach every summer for as long as Claire can remember, and hiking across the boardwalk leading from the parking lot to the sand feels a little like walking back in time. “Do you think we should try a new spot next time?” she asks as she thunks her tote bag down in the sand and passes Molly her sweating coffee.   
  
Molly shoves her sunglasses back on her forehead and squints up, shielding her eyes. “Why?”  
  
“I don’t know, just for a change,” Claire says. “To be adventurous?”  
  
Molly just shakes her sunglasses back down. “_You _wanna be adventurous?” she says. “Ms. Play It Safe herself?”   
  
“I’m not that bad,” Claire says, obscurely hurt.   
  
A seagull shrieks nearby. Molly shugs. “I mean, lead the way,” she says. “You find the adventure, I’ll follow you.”  
  
“Maybe I will,” Claire says.  
  
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Molly tells her.  
  
It’s the kind of perfect beach weather Claire spent all winter daydreaming about as the snow piled up in Cambridge, clean and pretty at first, getting grayer and grayer as the months wore on. That’s all far away now. The sky is so clear and blue you could sip it through a straw. Molly brought an umbrella and set it up even though she’s not using it herself, laid out on her towel in the sun. If Claire tried that, she’d be red all over in about five minutes. She keeps her baseball cap on and stays in the shade.   
  
Because it’s so nice out, the beach is busy. Rachel and Greg stop by for a little while, begging Molly and Claire to come with them to some beach volleyball tournament Delany’s trying to put together (“If Alex thinks I’m gonna come bounce around in a bikini for him,” Molly says, “he can think again,”) and after they’ve left, Molly says, “Wake me up if I look like I’m gonna burn,” and rolls over onto her stomach. Claire brought a book and she gets so caught up in it that when someone says, “Hey, Saffitz, long time no _see_,” she startles and glances up to find that the sun’s shifted hugely across the sky—how much time has passed?—and that the person grinning down at her is Brad.   
  
“Hey,” she says—then, dumbly, “Hey!” again, like she’s just catching up with reality, which is mortifying but makes him laugh. Molly was right: he _does_ look taller, which Claire hadn’t really thought was possible, and broader across the shoulders, too—not muscley, exactly, but filled out in a way that makes her stomach do something strange.   
  
Brad drops to sit next to her on the sand in the same easy way he does everything: like he can’t imagine he wouldn’t be welcome. “How long you been in town?” he says, knocking his leg against hers. It sends a little prickle of shocked sensation up the whole length of her body. “Why didn’t you call me?”  
  
“I got back like two days ago,” Claire says, “I’ve barely even had time to do laundry.”  
  
“Oh yeah?” Brad says skeptically, leaning forward a little to peer across her. “Hey, Molly.”  
  
“That’s _different_,” Claire protests.  
  
“Hey, Brad,” Molly says. She shifts a little, turning her face on the towel, and blinks one eye open. “Did you ask Adam about that bonfire for me?”  
  
“Ask him yourself,” Brad says, and knocks his leg against Claire’s again. Another little shock. “Hey, you back all summer?”   
  
Claire wishes, suddenly and fiercely, that Molly actually was asleep. After their conversation the other night, she feels disconcertingly on display, even just sitting here talking to Brad in a way that should be normal. It _is_ normal, it actually _is_. Just because it feels like Molly can read Claire’s thoughts—just because she’s managing somehow to smirk without moving a single muscle on her face—Claire’s not even thinking anything weird, she reminds herself. The back of her neck is hot. “Yeah, mostly,” she says. “I think we’re going to St. Louis for a week in July, maybe, but mostly here.”   
  
“Gonna see that Golden Arch!” Brad says, slapping his own leg.   
  
“Gateway Arch,” Claire and Molly correct at the same time.  
  
“It’s not a McDonalds,” Molly says, yawning.  
  
Brad shrugs unconcernedly. “Whatever,” he says. “Claire, you been in the water yet?”  
  
Claire makes a face. “It’s definitely still really cold.”  
  
“Bracing!” Brad corrects. “You ain’t even been in yet? Claire, you _gotta_. First dip of the summer, c’mon.”  
  
“I’m reading,” Claire says.  
  
“It ain’t a movie, Claire, it stops if you set it down.”  
  
“You can stop a movie too,” Claire says, frowning.   
  
“Come in the water,” Brad says. He’s turned to look right at her; his eyes are so blue the sky seems flat and pale beside them. _Claire, Jesus Christ, _she thinks, mortified, but it’s not _her_ fault Brad’s staring at her this intently, smiling this private little smile, daring her to—just, daring her.   
  
“Brad, lay off,” Molly groans, and flips over onto her back again. “Go in the water yourself if you want.”  
  
“I wanna go with Claire,” he says, and rocks sideways to nudge his shoulder against hers.   
  
Claire sets her book down carefully. She’s uncomfortably aware that she’s wearing the same black one-piece she’s worn every summer for at least five years, so worn it’s gray and pilling at the seams. “I have to put more sunscreen on,” she says.  
  
“I’ll do your back,” Brad says. Claire’s mind, which has been baking in the sun for hours, provides a visceral little preview before she shuts it down, quick and brutal.  
  
“And then I can’t swim for half an hour,” she says.  
  
“Yeah, you can,” Brad says.  
  
“No, I _can’t_, it says on the _bottle_,” Claire says.  
  
“Fine,” Brad says, “then I’ll sunscreen your back and you can tell me all about hotshot Harvard and _then_—”   
  
“Brad,” someone says. Both of them turn to look. It’s just Pat. “Hey, Claire,” he adds. “Moll. Brad, Adam’s here, we gotta go.”  
  
For the first time since he came over, Brad frowns, reaching up to adjust his hat. “He said one thirty,” Brad says, but Pat just shrugs.  
  
“Well,” he says, “he’s here now. How’s college going, Claire?”  
  
“It’s good,” Claire starts, but Brad, who’s been sitting there frowning up at Pat, grunts, then, and shoves up to his feet.   
  
“Okay, you got off this time,” Brad says, “but next time I see ya—the full report, Saffitz. And we’re going swimming!”   
  
“See ya, losers,” Molly says. “Brad, _please_ ask Adam for me—”  
  
“I told you the first time,” Brad says, waving her off. “I ain’t your manservant. Claire, seriously—call me.”  
  
“Like I said,” Molly says as Brad and Pat trudge away towards the parking lot. “Certifiably weird. When you’re around, I’m chopped liver to that guy.”  
  
“Yeah, well, maybe if you didn’t keep asking for favors he doesn’t wanna do,” Claire says, tucking her hair behind her ears.  
  
Claire watches Brad walk across the beach for a while. Pat’s ribbing him about something, elbowing his side, laughing when Brad shoves him back and speeds up. Claire only stops staring when Molly says, “You said—sunscreen?” and sits up to do Claire’s back herself. Claire thinks about Brad’s big fingers rubbing under her swimsuit straps just once—shivers—and then banishes the thought forever—leans forward and watches the waves crash against the sand.   
  
  
  
  
Claire doesn’t call Brad.  
  
It’s not that she doesn’t want to, exactly, but—well, it’s weird that Brad kept saying it in the first place—_why didn’t you call me? Claire, seriously, call me—_when that’s never been them, actually. They don’t text much; they don’t make plans. Claire’s had some of the best times of her life with Brad, but never on purpose. They end up at the same events because they have a Venn diagram of friends. Sometimes they happen onto each other around town, get to talking, and surface hours later, shocked at how much time has passed. But calling—calling and saying, _Hey, it’s me, wanna hang out—_  
  
Anyway, Claire doesn’t.   
  
She does run into him, though. On Monday, she catches sight of him unloading a truck near the pharmacy; on Wednesday, he’s behind the counter at the fish market—it’s busy, and he barely manages to wave at her with one hand full of shrimp before someone’s demanding his attention again. And on Saturday, while she and her mom are out running errands, they end up stopped at a red light right next to him, Claire turning to glance idly out the window and startling when she finds him grinning back. She’s so shocked she must pull an all-time stupid face—it makes Brad laugh, anyway, slapping the side of his car where he’s dangling his arm out the window. The light turns green before she has a chance to do anything but wave, which makes her mother glance over too. “Oh, was that Brad?” she says as he revs ahead of them, and there’s no way for Claire to stem a tide of questions about how his family’s doing, what he’s been up to, where he’s working these days—nothing Claire feels prepared to answer, or wants to.   
  
“I haven’t really seen him since I got back,” Claire says, and turns up the radio. She’s getting that same feeling she got with Molly the other day, a kind of hot-all-over defensiveness, completely baseless since there’s nothing actually to defend or explain. Her mother isn’t even implying anything, unlike Molly. Still. If she has to explain about Sarah or anything… well, she just doesn’t feel like doing that.   
  
She doesn’t see Brad again for real until midway through the next week. He’s hanging out by the hostess stand at Evelyn’s when she stops by after the lunch rush on Tuesday, and he jerks out of a slump when he catches a glimpse of her. “Hey, ole Half-Sour herself! You stalkin’ me?” he says, in this voice like he was bored to death before she showed up—like her presence is bringing him back to life. It’s pretty much how Brad talks to everybody—almost too enthusiastic to be believable—but Claire can’t stop it from going to her head a little.   
  
“How many jobs are you working right now?” she asks to shake the feeling off. “I can’t cross the street without running into you.”  
  
Brad shrugs. “A little here, little there,” he says. “You know.” Then: “You’re not eating here, are you?”  
  
“I was gonna,” Claire says, but Brad snorts and ducks his head to yank his apron off.  
  
“With these shmucks?” he says. “No offense.”  
  
“Offense,” the hostess says, even though she’s grinning. Girls grin a lot around Brad. They always have, ever since he shot up a few feet in high school, grew into his huge head. Claire shouldn’t really care—it’s none of her business if he’s got something going on with his coworker, even if _she_ wouldn’t—whatever—it’s none of her business. But she still feels mortifyingly smug when he says, “C’mon, you can take me out to lunch.”  
  
“Oh, I can?” she says dryly, but she follows him outside anyway. “Aren’t you the one with all the jobs? Maybe you should take _me_ out to lunch.”   
  
“I said a _little_,” Brad says. “Little here, little there. Little jobs.”  
  
“Well, if they’re little,” Claire says, laughing.  
  
They go to the diner, where the waitress tucks them into a booth near the kitchen, small enough that Claire almost wants to call her back and ask for a fourtop. She tucks her legs close to the vinyl seat instead and pages through the menu, even though she probably has it memorized after all these years. Brad doesn’t open his. After a minute, Claire glances up to find him staring at her—not particularly intently, but steadily, toned arm resting along the seatback. “What?” she asks.   
  
“Nothin’,” Brad says.   
  
The seat of the booth is sticky against Claire’s legs. She shifts a little; it makes a crackly sound. “Aren’t you gonna look at the menu?”   
  
“I know what I want,” Brad says, but he flips it open anyway.  
  
It’s a little awkward for a while. Even though it’s just the two of them, Claire has this feeling like her mom and Molly and any number of their mutual friends might be one booth over, listening in on their conversation. It makes her ears feel hot, makes her second guess everything she says. But Brad is just Brad, and by the time their food comes, he’s doing the goofiest impression of Andy Claire’s ever seen, really hamming it up; it makes her laugh so hard her stomach aches.   
  
“Okay,” Brad says while she’s salting her omelette. “Spill.”  
  
“Spill what?”  
  
“Everything,” Brad says. “I haven’t seen you in like a year, gimme everything.”  
  
“Brad, that is like—not helpful,” Claire says. “That’s very, very broad.”  
  
Brad makes a little sound like a groan, even though he’s grinning. “Claire, I swear to God,” he says. “I mean, how’s Hahvahd—”  
  
“Stop it—”  
  
“—how’s the whole college deal, are you—do you like it—that kind of thing.”  
  
“Oh, sure, that kind of thing,” she says. “I don’t know, it’s fine.”  
  
“Fine?”  
  
“It’s school,” she says.  
  
“You love school,” Brad says stubbornly.  
  
“That doesn’t make it _interesting_,” Claire says, but Brad’s looking so exasperated with her that she ends up telling him about Christina, and about the toaster oven kitchen they set up in their dorm room; about Amiel sitting on her bed for hours learning how to make radish roses while they all watched Buffy; about the time he set a trash can on the quad on fire with a cigarette butt; about her Food, Culture, and Society class, her favorite place to study, the time she and Christina got stranded halfway across Boston in a snowstorm. Claire doesn’t like the “how’s college” question, usually—she can never think how to answer it. Talking to Brad, though, she forgets what he even asked in the first place: somehow she’s just telling him about her life, nudging the door open and letting him in.   
  
“Hey,” she says impulsively after the waitress has cleared their dishes. She’s still working on a soda, drinking slowly. “I’m sorry about Sarah.”  
  
Brad looks blank for a second, then even blanker—the movement from incomprehension to feigned indifference. “Molly told ya, huh?”   
  
“You know Molly,” Claire says, almost wishing she hadn’t brought it up after all. Brad just shrugs, though, reaching back to rub at his neck a little, like knowing Molly is the kind of thing that gives a guy regular tension headaches.  
  
“It wasn’t a big deal,” he says after a moment. “I mean, it was, but—I dunno. It was coming for a while.” When Claire doesn’t say anything, he adds, “We just wanted different stuff. You know.”  
  
“Not really,” Claire says. She’s thinking about Brad working all these jobs—about Brad saving up for a house or a ring or whatever. About Sarah not wanting that. “Are you doing okay?”   
  
Brad shrugs. “Fine,” he says. “It wasn’t the end of the world.” Then: “You dating anyone at school?”  
  
“What?” Claire says, startled. “No. Me? No.”  
  
“Whaddya mean, ‘me’?”  
  
“Nothing,” Claire says. She feels goosebumpy all over; the air conditioning is cranked way too high in here. “Just that…I just don’t really have time for that.”   
  
Brad pulls a face. “What, they lock you in your room, make you study twenty-four hours a day?”  
  
“No,” Claire says. “Well—they don’t _make _you. I’m just not looking for anything right now.”  
  
“Real busy, gotcha,” Brad says. “Plenty of time to watch every season of Buffy though, huh?”  
  
“Shut up,” Claire says, pulling her straw out of her soda and flicking it at him.   
  
He splutters a little when she gets him in the face, but somehow it doesn’t shut him up. “Lotta options at Harvard, I bet,” he says, scrubbing an arm across his face, licking it afterward, which is very gross and very Brad. There’s something weird about his voice—kind of closed off, measured in a way he normally isn’t. “Lotta future senators running around, right? Lotta guys with yachts?”   
  
“You think I should get a boyfriend who owns a yacht?” Claire asks, bemused.   
  
Brad pulls a face. “I didn’t say that. I just meant, y’know, they’re there.”  
  
“Trust me,” Claire says, “I know. Guys with yachts never let you forget about it. And anyway,” Claire says as Brad barks out a laugh, “we weren’t even talking about me.”  
  
“Well, we ain’t talking about me anymore either,” Brad says.   
  
“But—”  
  
“There’s nothing to talk about. Molly’s a gossip.”  
  
Claire’s pretty sure if she tries to push him anymore, he’ll get mad. Fine. “You don’t have to tell me _that_,” she says, and changes the subject.   
  
When the check comes, Brad swipes it before Claire can so much as blink and shifts in the booth so that his legs knock against hers under the table. “I was just kidding,” Claire protests, but Brad says, “You can get it next time,” and heads up front to pay. She trails behind him and watches as he leans forward, elbows on the counter, to goof with the waitress while she rings him up. Brad has this particular easy grin he breaks out sometimes that just—it doesn’t mean anything much to Claire, Claire’s known him forever, but to other girls—it’s just flirty, that’s all. Claire can see their waitress running the numbers a little, glancing over at Claire and back at Brad. _Don’t worry_, she thinks, _he’s—_what had Molly said? On the open market? _But only if you’re gonna let him buy you a ring someday_. Claire sighs, rubbing her palms against her legs. Whatever Brad says, she’s pretty sure he can’t be doing _great_ about the breakup, since he shut down all her attempts to talk about it. Well, fine: she won’t make him. She’d felt obligated, not least because Molly’s out there acting like it’s unthinkable that he might be remotely upset. But when she actually imagines Brad giving in—sighing, dropping his head into his hands, saying, “Well, Claire, as you know, it was a perfect relationship and she was my dream girl and she broke my heart and maybe it ain’t ever gonna heal—”  
  
Anyway, no skin off her back if he doesn’t wanna bare his soul to her. She not sure what she’d do if he did.  
  
She wonders if he’ll give the waitress his number. She knows how breakups work, kind of. Abstractly. Maybe Brad’s looking for a rebound—someone to pass the time with until his heart’s healed up a little. Until he’s ready for something real again. And their waitress is pretty: tall and tan and blonde, with very neat white teeth. He could do worse. Claire picks at the fraying hem of her shorts and waits for them to stop laughing.  
  
“Claire,” Brad says as they’re heading out the door, “I gotta talk to you about something before we leave.”  
  
Claire’s heart does a kind of double-thump. “What?”   
  
Brad looks really serious. “Do you know how a phone works?”   
  
“What?” Claire repeats blankly.  
  
“Do you know how a phone works?” Brad says again, slowly. “Because I keep saying _call me_ and I ain’t heard from you once—”  
  
“Oh my God,” Claire says.  
  
“I mean, I sit around waiting—honestly day and night, Claire, and you ain’t called _once—_”  
  
“You’re ridiculous—”  
  
“You’re hurtin’ my feelings, Claire, I swear to God—”   
  
“Well, why don’t you call _me_?” Claire says finally, exasperated.  
  
They’re out on the sidewalk. Brad lets the door swing shut behind them. “I was just waiting for you to ask, Saffitz,” he says, shutting down the melodramatics just like that, and smiles, slow and easy.  
  
  
  
  
Brad texts a few days later: _Wanna beach today? 🤙_  
  
_Wanna _beach_ today? _Claire rolls over onto her stomach. It’s barely eight, the morning sun slanting sweetly through her bedroom window. Brad’s message woke her up and she feels fuzzy and unguarded. _When today? _she texts back.   
  
_She CAN use her phone huh? _  
  
_Guess you should’ve asked me to TEXT you in the first place, _Claire says, and drops her phone back onto the mattress. The air conditioning’s not on—Claire’s parents try not to use it when they don’t have to—but the overhead fan is whirring. Claire shivers a little and rubs her cheek against the pillow. She’s half considering falling back asleep—just this side of too antsy and alert to actually drift off again—when her phone lights up with a call. _Brad. _It’s like a bucket of water over her head, that much of a jolt to her system: her pulse does something crazy the second she clocks whose name is on the screen. She can’t answer it. She’s not gonna answer it. She—  
  
“Hey,” she says. She sounds beyond stupid, voice rough with sleep. She wants to burrow into the mattress and stay there forever.   
  
“I guess you’re right,” Brad says.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I said I’d _call_,” Brad says. “Technically.”  
  
“Well—oh,” Claire says dumbly. She can’t make her brain move fast enough to keep up with this conversation. “Yeah. You did.”  
  
“You doing okay over there?” Brad asks, sounding amused.  
  
“Kind of,” she says.   
  
“I wake you up?”  
  
“Maybe,” she says.   
  
There’s a pause, a little crackle of breath down the line. “Well, hop to it, babe,” Brad says after a beat. “Up and at ‘em. Can’t lie around in bed all day. Some of us’ve been up since five.”  
  
Brad, Claire knows, will call anybody babe. People and objects she has personally heard him refer to as babe: his truck; his girlfriend—ex-girlfriend; every single one of his friends; a seagull, while he fed it little scraps of mortadella, cackling; his favorite tree. It is ultimately and objectively un-meaningful that Brad just called her babe, but that doesn’t stop her pulse from jumping at how warm and intimate it sounded, his voice low in her ear. If she were smart, she’d hop off this call quick, go take a cold shower and remind herself to keep her distance.  
  
“Some of us are dumb,” she says instead, wriggling onto her side, pressing the phone closer to her face. “Is the sun even up at five?”  
  
“It ain’t,” Brad says. “But _some_ of us have _work_, I dunno if you’ve heard of it.”   
  
“You work too much, ” Claire says. “You have too many jobs. You have like a jillion jobs.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Brad says, “maybe I’m saving up.”  
  
“Saving up for what?”  
  
“Saving up for—like, if I wanted to move, or…”  
  
“Into your own place?” Claire says. It’s too early for this conversation; her brain isn’t online.  
  
“Or off the Cape,” Brad says, “I dunno. We’ll see. I mean, what am I gonna do, live here forever? I dunno.”  
  
Claire has a sudden vision of Brad packing up a moving van, getting it organized just right, strapping furniture down, tetrising boxes into place. In her vision, Sarah’s still in the picture, standing behind him, hands on her hips. She’s incandescently pretty. Claire wonders if she wanted Brad to move to—where is she? Where did Molly say? Montana? If she asked him to go; if he’s still considering it.   
  
She doesn’t wanna talk about any of that.  
  
“Well, some of us are gonna stay in bed for awhile,” Claire says, effectively cutting off the conversation. She’s expecting a laugh, but there’s just another crackle of breath in the receiver. “What time?” she asks quickly, to forestall any weirdness.  
  
“What?” Brad says, like he’s forgotten what they’re talking about. Then: “Oh. Uh. Noon?”  
  
“Sure,” Claire says.   
  
“If you can actually wake up by then,” Brad adds, then says, “Gotta go. Break’s over. Seeya later.”  
  
The phone beeps in Claire’s ear. She lets it slide off her face onto the pillow and stares at her own hand, resting on the bed in a stripe of sunlight. She feels clenched up in a way that almost scares her, and lies there for a long time trying to think nothing at all before her mother starts vacuuming the stairs and she has to get up for real.  
  
Brad shows up at the beach with a cooler, a surfboard, and an umbrella the size of a tent, and makes Claire run into the water with him almost right away. “I told you,” Claire says when she’s up to her hips, shivering so hard it feels like her lips must be blue, “it’s _cold_,” but Brad just says, “Pretty great, huh?” and dives into the next big wave that hits him, so that Claire feels like she has no choice but to dive in too. She surfaces with her teeth chattering to find Brad standing nearby, grinning at her. “Nothing better, right?” he says.   
  
“_Incredibly _cold,” Claire reiterates emphatically, but she’s smiling too, in spite of herself. There’s a big boat moving fast along the horizon, seabirds swooping close to the water and sailing easily back into the sky. Brad’s shirtless, obviously, which she isn’t letting herself think about, _obviously_, except that it’s hard to ignore when he shakes his hair out of his face like a dog, rubs a huge hand needlessly across his chest and says, “Whatever, Saffitz, I know you’re havin’ fun.” So maybe it’s fine that the water’s near freezing after all.  
  
After that, Brad starts texting pretty often. “How come you always text _Brad _back,” Molly asks, watching Claire peck at her phone one evening at the diner. “Oh wait—”  
  
“Shut up,” Claire says, refusing to go red. “I told you—”  
  
“‘Just friends,’ yeah, I know,” Molly says, rolling her eyes in this way that makes her look about seven years old.  
  
“Don’t be a jerk, Molly,” Claire says. “You know, he’s not doing as great as you think he is.” When Molly just stares at her, uncomprehending, Claire says, “The breakup?”  
  
“Oh my god,” Molly says, “he is way over the breakup, moron,” but she lets it drop and doesn’t even act weird when they all go to the beach together a few days later, aside from giving Claire a couple of sidelong looks after Brad leaves for his shift at Evelyn’s.  
  
“What?” Claire says.  
  
“Nothing,” Molly says. “Whatever. Do it your way, I guess.”  
  
It should be weird, the whole hanging out with Brad on purpose thing, but mostly it feels so normal that it almost makes Claire nervous. She gets in the habit of meeting up with Brad after his restaurant shifts, sometimes to go to the beach, sometimes for ice cream even though Brad rarely gets anything, just frowns at the menu and says, “They oughta make savory flavors,” pressing the point when Claire looks unconvinced. “Stuff like curry ice cream and—soup popsicles and stuff—Claire, this is a _good idea!_”  
  
“Uh huh,” Claire says, and orders a strawberry cone.   
  
She and Brad go biking—he de-rusts the chains and patches the tires of her mom’s old bike for her. They go to the movies, just once—Brad fidgets through the whole thing—“Too much talking,” he says afterwards. “You oughta come over sometime and we’ll watch _Platoon. And _I can make better popcorn than that in my sleep.” They hang out near the dock watching the fishing boats come and go, Brad feeding the seagulls these little strips of dried fish he’s always got in his pockets for no reason Claire can figure out. “Do _you _eat those?”  
  
“Sometimes,” Brad says. “Claire, this stuff’s a delicacy—” even though she tries one once and it tastes like briny leather.   
  
When Claire actually thinks about it, which she mostly tries not to, she’s pretty sure Brad’s lonely. He used to spend a lot of time with Sarah, obviously, and now she’s not around anymore. Vinny moved away a couple years ago. He has Pat and Adam, Molly—people he’s known forever, people he loves, but—sometimes when she glances over at him while they’re hiking down the beach, she finds him staring past her towards the water with this look on his face like he wants something he can’t say. It makes her want to hold his hand, or pet his head, if he’d lay it in her lap. She wants to care for him in ways that frighten her. She wants him to be happy in ways that would hurt her if they happened.   
  
  
  
  
Claire has a bunch of people over to grill pizzas in early July. She only means to invite Molly in the first place, but then Molly wants to bring Emily who wants to bring Rachel who wants to bring Greg who wants to bring Alex, so Claire goes ahead and invites Chris and Andy and Brad too and calls it a party. Brad comes over early to help her make the dough and ends up so miserable, covered head to toe in flour, that by the time Molly shows up, Claire’s crying with laughter while Brad tries valiantly to save his second attempt. “Claire, stop it,” he says, “I did everything you said—Claire, I’m not kidding!”   
  
“This looks productive,” Molly says, dropping her bag near the door.   
  
“I swear to God the yeast’s got it in for me, Molly,” Brad says. “And Claire won’t _help_!”  
  
“It’s too funny to help,” Claire says, scrubbing at her eyes. “Molly, maybe you could tell Rachel to pick some up on the way.”   
  
“Next time,” Brad says darkly, trying to shake the dough off his hands, “we’re cooking lobster.”  
  
“Fine by me,” Claire says.  
  
“And _you’re _putting ‘em in the pot,” he says.   
  
“We’ll see,” Claire says primly.  
  
“Yeah,” Brad says, narrowing his eyes and leaning forward on the counter, “we will.”   
  
“Jesus Christ,” Molly says, and cuts them both off by calling Rachel.   
  
Claire hasn’t seen Chris all summer. He’s got an internship in Boston, and this is the first weekend he’s been around. She spends most of the night catching up with him and Andy while Brad tries to redeem himself by cooking the pizzas. “Has he gotten taller?” Chris asks, jerking his head towards the grill where Brad’s bent nearly in half to fiddle with the gas valve.   
  
“Yes,” Andy says immediately. “_And_ he broke up with his girlfriend. And he’s learning how to surf, and he’s thinking of selling his truck, and he and Claire are hanging out, like, all the time—”  
  
“You’re a worse gossip than Molly,” Claire snaps.  
  
“No,” Andy says, “I’m a _better_ gossip than Molly. I’m better at it. She gets her gossip from me.”  
  
Alex Delany shows up late with two tallboys and a packet of “really interesting” shaved ham. “For Madam Hostess,” he says, handing it over with a grin, then bends to hug her.   
  
“Thanks, Delany,” Claire says. She’s known Alex since she was in middle school; it’s easier not to ask too many questions.  
  
Delany’s a year younger than most of them and not starting college until fall, and even though he’s going to RISD, he keeps drawing Claire aside to talk about the “scene” in Boston and Cambridge. Claire didn’t understand what he meant the first time he said it and she’s not interested enough to ask now. “I’ve been running a street style blog—wait, do you follow me? You should follow me—anyway, I can’t wait to get into the city, I think it’s just gonna—you know—really blow up—and we should totally hang out, too.”  
  
“Totally,” Claire says, glancing across the yard towards where Brad’s scrunched himself into a camp chair so low to the ground that his knees are up around his ears. He’s grinning at some story Chris is telling, stretching his hat out on one knee.  
  
“You can show me all the cool spots,” Delany says.   
  
“Can I?” Claire asks distractedly. Andy’s smacking Brad’s arm, leaning in to say something that makes Brad’s eyebrows shoot up. Claire forces herself to stop staring; when she turns back to Delany, he seems closer than before. “I’m not sure I know any.”  
  
For some reason, that makes Delany laugh. “Come on,” he says, “I bet you do. You’re pretty cool, Claire.”  
  
“I know some great places to study, I guess,” Claire says dubiously, which makes him laugh again. He spends another ten minutes trying to get Claire to agree to do a style spot on his blog, and the next time she looks over at Brad, he’s looking back. It’s startling enough that she can feel herself flushing. It’s dark out, thank God; she doubts anyone will be able to tell. She smiles at Brad—at a distance, surely it won’t seem forced—but he doesn’t quite smile back, so maybe it does. There’s something in his expression that she can’t read, potent enough that she has to excuse herself, go to the bathroom, splash some water on her cheeks and stand there with her face buried in a towel for a long minute, thinking about nothing in particular.  
  
Molly and Rachel try to get everybody to decamp to a beach party around 11. “I’ve gotta clean up,” Claire says, and shrugs when Molly shoots her a look like she knows an excuse when she hears one. Most everybody leaves after that, but Brad sticks around to do the dishes.  
  
“You don’t have to,” Claire says. “It’s my house.” But Brad just tells her to put some music on, and headbangs while he fills the sink with warm water, using one of Delany’s empty beer cans as a microphone.   
  
Afterwards, sitting out on the screened-in porch, Brad says, “Delany, huh?”   
  
Claire hums thoughtlessly. She’s staring out across the backyard, trying to arrange the fireflies into constellations even as they blink on and off in shifting patterns. “What about him?” When Brad doesn’t say anything, she glances over at him. “What?” she says again.  
  
“Nothin’,” Brad says.   
  
“He was pretty normal tonight,” Claire says. “I mean, normal for Delany.”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“_What_?” Claire says. “Brad, I’m not a mindreader. I thought you liked the guy.”  
  
“I like him fine,” Brad says, then shrugs like he’s giving up and says, “He sure likes you, that’s all.”  
  
“Likes—oh my god,” Claire says, genuinely startled. “He sure _doesn’t_.”  
  
“‘Madam hostess,’” Brad says mockingly.  
  
“Brad, Jesus,” Claire says. “_Delany_? I’ve known him since middle school, that’s not… that is _not_ what’s happening there.”  
  
“What does middle school have to do with anything?”  
  
“I was,” Claire says, and stops, feeling tongue-tied. _Weird in middle school, _she wants to say, except that she knows it sounds stupidly melodramatic. _Everyone _was weird in middle school. She knows that. It isn’t objectively interesting that she was a shy kid; that she read a lot, kept to herself; that she cried when her parents dropped her off at Ocean Kids Camp even though she was ten and only spending one night away from home. So what? None of it should matter now. But when she thinks about someone knowing that kid—and knowing her now—and _wanting_ her—“Trust me,” she says, “I don’t think anyone who knew me in middle school is trying to put the moves on me.”  
  
“You were cute in middle school,” Brad says. He shifts in his chair, crossing his legs and then uncrossing them, like he can’t get comfortable.  
  
Claire blinks. “No I wasn’t.”  
  
“Yeah, Claire, you were,” Brad says, an impatient note in his voice. “You were nice. You helped me write a book report on _White Fang _when I got stuck in summer school.” He’s leaning forward on his knees now, looking strangely stubborn.   
  
“You remember that?” Claire says, faintly surprised.   
  
Brad snorts. “Yeah, Claire, I remember that. I was, like, illiterate. You saved my ass.”   
  
“Oh,” Claire says, and clears her throat. “Anyway,” she says, “what are you saying, you think I _should_ date Delany?”   
  
“No,” Brad says, frowning. He knocks his hand against his knee. “I mean, whatever. Do whatever you want.”   
  
“I don’t want anything,” Claire says. She feels awfully tired all of a sudden, and her bare legs are getting cold. “On the other hand,” she says, trying to smooth over an awkwardness she doesn’t understand, “maybe—do you know if he owns a yacht?”  
  
Brad laughs, genuine and abrupt. “Jesus,” he says. “Hoisted on my own pet-yard.”  
  
“Petard,” Claire corrects, and nudges his leg with her toe.  
  
“Yeah, well, I’m still illiterate,” Brad says.   
  
Claire tucks her hair behind her ear and looks back out at the fireflies. “I like you anyway,” she says.  
  
  
  
  
Christina and Amiel come to visit for a long weekend mid-summer. Amiel’s been working in the kitchen at a restaurant off campus all summer—“It turns out,” he tells Claire when she comes to pick them up from the ferry, “that I.” He pauses dramatically. He’s wearing a denim vest and denim shorts and knee socks, a little handkerchief knotted around his neck.   
  
“Amiel—”  
  
“Am a _great_ dishwasher,” he says proudly. “And also a danger to myself and others when permitted to handle a knife!”   
  
“Good for you, buddy,” Christina says, dropping an arm across his shoulders and shifting her duffel bag on her shoulder.  
  
“Amiel,” Claire says, “please don’t chop your own finger off this summer.”  
  
“Don’t worry,” he tells her cheerfully, “I’m practicing a lot.”   
  
“Great,” Claire says weakly, and drives them both back to her house.   
  
Amiel and Christina are easy guests; they’re happy to do anything. She takes them around to some of the touristy spots, but mostly they go to the beach and hang around her house, cooking inside even though it’s sweltering until Claire’s mom gets fed up and bans them from turning the oven on. They’ve been in town for a couple days before Brad texts one evening: a picture of the sunset, an alien neon pink under a comforter of purple clouds, and _where you been this week? _  
  
Claire sends back a picture of Christina and Amiel sitting on lawn chairs in the backyard. _I’ve got friends in town_, she says, and wonders seconds after pressing send whether the picture was weird. Brad doesn’t know Christina and Amiel; he probably doesn’t care who’s visiting.   
  
But all he says is _Nice_, and then: _Doing anything fun? _  
  
Claire stares at the screen for a moment. _Nothing interesting. Got any ideas? _  
  
It takes barely a second for Brad to text back: _Wanna take em clamming? I got buckets. _  
  
_You want to come? _Claire types carefully after a moment.   
  
_It was my idea _🤪 Brad says. _Unless you don’t want me to meet em. _  
  
Claire doesn’t know what to say to that. Eventually she texts back, _Just don’t tell them any embarrassing stories about me._  
  
_You’ve never been embarrassing in your life, _Brad says. Claire stares at the message. It’s not hard to imagine Brad saying that in person; she thinks about it for a second, the way he’d sound so easy and earnest, like he wasn’t even lying. Then she sets her phone aside and goes inside to find a seltzer.  
  
They go clamming near Claire’s house, at a little spot she’s been plenty of times. Amiel, who seems sometimes to be tuning into planet Earth from another plane of existence entirely, is uncharacteristically enraptured by Brad’s explanations about the process. He stands in his neon swimsuit in the shallow water and nods seriously at everything Brad says, even when Brad’s not saying anything particularly sensical. “He wants me to do what with the rake?” Christina asks under her breath.  
  
“It’s not actually that hard,” Claire says, “I’ll show you,” just as Brad waves his clam gauge so enthusiastically that it flies out of his hand and into the water.   
  
“This is better than performance art,” Christina says when Brad and Amiel practically crack heads ducking to grab for it.  
  
“Should I tell them to use the rake?”  
  
“Please don’t,” Christina says fervently, so they just stand there watching for awhile.  
  
Claire didn’t necessarily think Christina and Amiel wouldn’t get along with Brad, but she didn’t they _would _either. She’s wondering now if that constituted a failure of imagination on her part—or if she was scared, a little bit, of Brad slipping too easily into the parts of her life he’s never touched before. Maybe she thought it would be convenient if Brad wasn’t interested in her college friends, if they weren’t interested in him either. It would make it easier not to want… she doesn’t know. Not to want his attention so much and so often, if he’d been blankly polite to Amiel and Christina; if they’d stared bewilderedly back.   
  
Instead, everyone gets along fine—better than fine, Claire thinks, watching Christina whoop with laughter while Brad measures one of her clams, then tosses it into her bucket, saying, “Big boy! Put him in the pot!”  
  
“Why do I keep having to throw mine back?” Amiel asks.  
  
“Because they’re too small, bud,” Brad says. “I don’t make the rules.”  
  
They’re in the water up to their thighs. Brad bends to drag his rake through the sand again and when he pulls it up, there are two dark clams resting on the prongs. “Heyo,” he says, checking one and tossing it in the bucket. When he picks up the next one, though, he whistles and hands Amiel his rake. “Got a weird one,” he says.  
  
“Weird how?” Christina asks.  
  
“Weird gross,” Brad says cheerfully. “Claire, wanna see?”  
  
“I wanna see,” Amiel says. Christina’s already taking a step forward, peering down interestedly.   
  
But Brad’s not looking at them—he’s looking at Claire, grinning a little.  
  
“Claire?” he says again.  
  
“Weird gross how,” Claire says cautiously.  
  
“Wellll,” Brad says, drawing it out. He takes a step towards her. “Kinda weird gross slimy.”  
  
“_I _wanna see,” Amiel says again.  
  
“Let Amiel see,” Claire says, scrunching her nose up, but Brad says, “I wanna show you first, though,” grinning wider.   
  
“Brad,” Claire warns him, “_don’t_.”  
  
“Don’t what?”  
  
“Show me a gross slimy clam,” Claire says, “when _all_ clams are slimy, so if you’re saying it about this one in _particular_—”   
  
“Claire, this is educational,” Brad says.  
  
“Educate somebody else,” Claire says, taking another step back, but Brad’s already wading cheerfully towards her, wet black clam glistening in his outstretched palm, saying, “You love to learn, though,” both of them laughing as Claire keeps backing away from him. “Stop running away!”  
  
“Stop _chasing_ me,” Claire says, and shrieks when he shrugs and whacks a hand through the water, sending water splashing in her direction. “Oh my god, grow _up_,” Claire says, except that Christina’s throwing her head back, laughing, and saying, “I’ve got your back, Claire,” and splashing Brad—and Brad’s saying, “Hey, I measured your clam for you!” and splashing _her_—and then Amiel’s splashing everyone, rapidly and repeatedly. For a minute, everyone hollering and thrashing, it’s chaotic enough that when Claire’s blinking water out of her eyes, she’s not sure where _anyone_ is—Christina or Amiel or Brad or Brad’s weird clam—before she takes another step back, laughing, only to find the ground isn’t where she expects it to be—ankle twisting under her, stomach jolting in sick anticipation—  
  
—and then there’s an arm around her waist; a hand braced against her back. “Whoa,” Brad says, near her ear, and tugs her closer. “Get your feet under you, c’mon.”   
  
Claire blinks. She reaches up to scrub the water out of her eyes, stomach doing a slow flip. Brad’s hand is huge; she’s wearing a swimsuit and shorts, back bare, and she can feel the calluses on his fingers, the heat of his palm against her skin. Her pulse is doing something—crazy, she realizes dimly, heart in her throat. It’s going _fast_. The sun seems too bright all of a sudden, glinting off the water, and when she glances up, Brad’s looking down at her with such an expression of clear, kind concern that she almost can’t bear it all of a sudden. Brad is tall and solid—secure—and his hand on her back, his body this close to hers, is fogging her brain. It’s making her mouth dry. _No_, she thinks, _no, no_, but there’s heat flooding through her body, blooming in her stomach, and she wants—she _wants—_  
  
“You okay?” Brad says, low and warm. Amiel and Christina are still splashing each other, laughing and hollering.   
  
“Fine,” Claire says breathlessly. “It’s just water, I wasn’t gonna crack my skull open or anything. Thanks. Sorry.”  
  
Brad snorts. “You’re apologizing to me? I was chasing _you_.”   
  
“Right,” Claire says. She shifts a little in Brad’s hold; he doesn’t let go. “Right,” she says again. “Brad?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Are you still holding that fucking clam?” she asks.  
  
Brad laughs, tightening his arm against her. She feels it like a pulse between her legs. “Dropped the clam,” Brad says. “You’re safe from the clam. You ain’t ever gotta see the clam, babe.”   
  
Claire can’t stand it, suddenly: the way he’s smiling down at her, the heat of his body against hers, his fingers flexing against her back. “I’m okay now,” she says abruptly, shifting against his grip again, then takes a full step away from him so that he has no choice but to drop his arm.  
  
“Oh,” he says. He looks startled and a little at a loss, hand curled up loosely at his side. “Right. You’re…you didn’t twist an ankle or anything, right?”  
  
“I’m fine,” Claire says. It comes out sharp, borderline unfriendly, but it’s not her _fault_—she feels prickly all over and ashamed of herself, almost, for the way her body reacted to—just, the normalest, friendliest gesture, she reminds herself, but try telling that to her knees, which are trembly and weak, or—Claire swallows hard. Her swimsuit feels too tight, or. Fuck. She’s actually wet, uncomfortably wet, just from—from nothing. From Brad being a perfectly nice, normal friend. She can feel it every time she shifts, this hot throb between her legs. “Thanks,” she says again, and crosses her arms over her chest. Her nipples are hard. It’s probably not that obvious, she thinks, and almost wants to cry.  
  
“Yeah,” Brad says. He’s looking at her weird, which makes sense since she’s being such an obvious freak. “No problem,” he says, smiling tightly, and turns away. “Amiel, you got my rake?”   
  
Claire’s pulse is still erratic. She turns away herself, taking a deep breath and staring at the shore for a long moment before she heaves a sigh and wades back towards Christina, pasting on a smile. _It’s nothing_, she thinks, but then she’s staring at Brad’s back, his sunburnt shoulders, his muscled arms, and it isn’t—it isn’t nothing at all.  
  
Brad collects the most clams; Christina the second most. Claire collects the least, and when they’re back on shore, tucking towels around their shoulders and sorting through the buckets in the back of Brad’s truck, she just laughs about it instead of screaming the way she wants to. It feels like some part of her brain she’s been switching off and switching off and switching off, determined to keep it under control, just won’t switch off anymore, and worse, it feels like everyone can see it. How could they _not_? She’s flushed—she’s been flushed for an hour at least because Brad won’t stop walking around being—being _Brad, _he’s just _Brad_, same as he’s always been, but she wants his arm around her waist again, she wants his mouth on her shoulder, his hand on her stomach, she wants—  
  
“_Claire_,” Brad says, a half notch too loud.  
  
“What?” she says, clutching her towel closer around her shoulders.   
  
Brad frowns. “Are you guys coming to Molly’s thing tonight?”  
  
“Her what?” Claire says.  
  
“You got sunstroke or something?” Brad says, stepping towards her like he’s gonna try and take her temperature.  
  
Claire jerks back unconsciously and Brad stops moving. “Molly’s—oh,” Claire says. “Her party?”   
  
“Yeah.” Brad’s face is unreadable.  
  
“Uh. I don’t know,” Claire says. “Maybe. If Christina and Amiel want to. I hadn’t really thought about it.” God, she’s gotta act more normal than this. “She talked Adam into getting her that keg, huh?”  
  
“You know Molly,” Brad says. “Nothing she can’t do if she puts her mind to it.” He pauses, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, see ya there, maybe,” he says finally, expression still fixedly blank.   
  
Claire gropes at the wall of her brain but wherever the switch was before—_turn this _off_—_it’s gone now. “Maybe,” she says, holding herself tense and careful, like if she stops thinking about it for even a second she might lunge at him, and goes to help Christina sort out the clamming stuff.  
  
  
  
  
Christina and Amiel both want to go to the party. Of course they do. Claire keeps her hand at ten and two on the steering wheel driving home and thinks miserably about Murphy’s Law. If she were having this breakdown any other time, there’d be no one around to make her go anywhere; she could hole up in her house, breathe into a paper bag, and spend as long as she wanted trying to screw her head on straight. Instead, she has Amiel in the backseat saying “I’m gonna go nightswimming!” and Christina in the front, glancing sideways at Claire and saying, all too knowingly, “Brad is great.”  
  
“I don’t know if it’s gonna be a nightswimming kind of deal,” Claire says, ignoring Christina. She stops conscientiously at a stop sign and looks carefully both ways.  
  
“Well, it’ll be night,” Amiel says. “And Brad said there’ll a beach. Which means water. So there’ll be swimming. Ergo—”  
  
“_Really_ great,” Christina says, more emphatically. “He’s really nice.”  
  
“We don’t _have_ to go, though,” Claire says. She can feel Christina staring at her but she doesn’t wanna deal with it; she doesn’t _have _to deal with it. She’s _driving_. It should be illegal to stare at someone like that while they’re driving, like you know every secret thought passing through their mind. It should be punishable by—by something, anyway. “We could go to the movies, or… there’s lots of stuff we could do.”  
  
“I think the party sounds fun,” Christina says.  
  
“Night! Swimming!” Amiel says.  
  
“Fine,” Claire says, swinging around the tight corner leading to her driveway, sweaty palms slipping a little on the steering wheel, “so we’ll go. I was just saying if you didn’t want to—but we can go,” she says, defeated, and turns the car off.  
  
  
  
  
Claire’s never been to a _party_ party on the Cape before, the kind with a keg and a bunch of half-empty bottles of Ruble, the kind where people get wasted enough to pass out in a basement or on a beach: the kind of party the cops might crash. She didn’t drink in high school, and she’d been shyer then. She’d always had some excuse not to go, anyway. Molly went to plenty; Claire thinks probably Brad did too. Sarah had been sweet and friendly and popular, the kind of girl who had something going on every weekend, and where she went, Brad had followed. Sarah’s probably still like that, just—in Montana. And someday, maybe he’ll follow her there too.  
  
Molly’s parents are out of town this weekend, and her house is already packed when Claire pushes open the front door. She recognizes a few people here and there—Rachel and Greg are cuddled up on one of the living room sofas, Delany sitting nearby rolling his eyes at something—but it’s mostly strangers, or vaguely familiar faces—people she’s passed on the street but never met or spoken to. She doesn’t see Brad anywhere, not that she’s looking. She’s _not_. It’s just that he’s easy to find, usually, because he’s so tall, and when she scans the room—  
  
“Oh my _God_,” Molly hollers from the kitchen. “That is _not_ Claire Saffitz! You _came_?”   
  
“This was definitely a mistake,” Claire tells Christina, looking around again for—just looking around again. But then Molly’s throwing her arms in the air and saying, “Introduce me!” with a beer in both hands, so there’s really no way out but through.  
  
Claire isn’t quite sure how she ends up drunk.   
  
She has one beer in the kitchen with Molly. That’s all she’s planning to drink all night. Except that Molly got the keg and keeps refilling Claire’s cup when it’s barely half empty, so that Claire can’t keep track of how many she’s actually had, and then Christina says she can drive them home—“I’ll be fine _later_,” Claire says, embarrassed, but Christina just laughs and says, “I know, but you don’t have to be”—and Molly’s refilling Claire’s cup again anyway, so Claire just gives her the keys. And after that there’s no reason not to have a jello shot when somebody starts passing those around—two, actually, because Christina grabs one off the tray for herself, then hands it to Claire instead, saying, “DD!” when Claire tries to push it back.  
  
“But I’m not getting drunk tonight,” Claire says. She’s looking towards the front door again, somehow; she’s not sure how that keeps happening.   
  
“Okay,” Christina says easily, and sets the little cup down on the counter. But eventually Claire takes the shot anyway—or anyway, she blinks down some indeterminate amount of time later and it’s gone.   
  
Things start to get a little hazy at that point.  
  
Time passes disjointedly. Claire leaves the kitchen after a while—she’s in the hallway with Amiel, then the living room with Christina, then back in the kitchen with Amiel and Christina and Andy and Chris—”Chris,” Claire says very seriously, “are you getting drunk tonight? Because I’m not.”   
  
“I’m doing whatever you do, Claire,” Chris says just as seriously.  
  
“Take another shot then,” Amiel tells him, so everyone but Christina has some tequila.   
  
At a certain point, someone turns the music up. When Claire glances out the patio doors, it’s dark, dark, the kind of sweet deep darkness that makes you wanna be by water. Molly’s house has access to a little beach. Claire can imagine walking on the sand in her bare feet, waves lapping up against her toes. But before she can open the door, someone’s saying, “Claire Saffitz,” in this cheerful, self-satisfied tone, and she knows before she even turns around who it is.   
  
“Hey, Delany,” she says, setting her drink down carefully on the counter.   
  
“Alex,” he says.   
  
“Alex Delany,” she repeats obediently, which makes him laugh, so maybe it _was_ a joke, even though she’s not sure quite why she said it.   
  
“I’ve never seen you at a party before in my life,” Delany says.   
  
“Well, here I am,” Claire says. Delany is tall. Delany is about as tall as Brad. Claire glances over his shoulder; the living room looks chaotic behind him. She thinks people are dancing.   
  
Delany, it turns out, is in the kitchen looking for Molly. He’s looking for Molly because he wants to know if she has a longer aux cord, because he wants to DJ—“DJ?” Claire asks, and follows him into the hallway mostly because he says, “Come on, there’s no one even in here,” which there isn’t—they all left while Claire was staring out the window.  
  
Molly isn’t in the hallway—obviously. “Why would Molly hang out in the hallway,” Claire says. “This whole house is hers.” And there’s not an aux cord in the hallway either—_obviously—_but Delany stops walking so Claire stops walking too, and leans against the wall to stop her head from spinning, which it’s starting to.  
  
Talking to Delany is fine—fun—fun because he’s so un-purposefully funny and doesn’t seem to know it. “What?” he keeps saying, grinning, whenever Claire cracks up, so that she has to say, “Nothing,” and try to pull it together—but the tequila’s hitting hard, and laughing is so _easy_—“What?” Delany says again.  
  
“Nothing,” Claire says. “You’re just tall.” She glances sidelong towards the front door, but it’s closed. _Open_, she thinks. Nothing happens. _Open, open, open. Open Sesame._  
  
“I was serious before,” Delany says.   
  
“Mmm?”  
  
“About next year,” he says. When Claire tears her eyes away from the door, he’s looking at her in this way—she doesn’t know what kind of way. Behind him, down the other end of the hallway, Christina and Amiel are doing the tango, or trying—they’re both laughing too hard to move. No one’s even asked _her_ to tango, she thinks, and then Delany clears his throat and she has to pay attention to him again   
  
“I really don’t know any cool spots,” she says apologetically.  
  
Delany shifts to lean on the wall next to her. “About us hanging out,” he says.  
  
“Oh,” Claire says. Andy’s down the other end of the hallway too, now. He has a hole in his shirt the size of a fist. Andy is short. He’s shorter than Amiel; he’s as short as Claire. Andy is short and Claire is short and Delany is tall and Brad—  
  
“Hey,” Brad says from over her shoulder, then, “whoa, easy,” when Claire stumbles trying to turn too quickly towards him. He puts a hand out to steady her, wrapping his fingers around her arm.   
  
“You came,” Claire says. She wants to tell him to move his hand, that he can move it, that he can put it—oh, anywhere. She thinks about that afternoon again, how it felt to be tucked up against Brad’s side. Her face feels hot. She feels hot all over.  
  
“_You_ came,” Brad says. He squeezes her arm once and lets go. It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to her. If she just—fell over, she thinks. If she stepped away from the wall and let herself go completely limp, Brad would _have_ to—“Delany,” he says.  
  
“Hmm?” Claire says, but when Delany says hey back, she remembers—oh. “I’m in the library a lot,” she tells him.  
  
“What?”  
  
“If you wanna hang out,” she says. “Or study. I mostly study. I know a really good table, there’s no gum on the bottom.”  
  
“For sure,” Delany says. “We could do that. Or even—”  
  
“You drunk, Saffitz?” Brad asks abruptly. When she looks up at him, his face is kind of—well, blurry. Maybe serious. He sounds serious.   
  
“No,” Claire says, also serious, because she doesn’t want Brad to worry. “I’m not getting drunk tonight.”  
  
“Oh yeah?” he says.   
  
“Yeah,” Claire says. Her mouth is dry. She thinks about what she could say that might work: _Brad, _she tries out, _if you want to put your hand somewhere_… Her brain feels like a pan with egg stuck to the bottom. Brad’s eyes are so blue; blue as clear water on the absolute nicest summer’s day.   
  
“Claire,” Delany says, but Brad says, right on top of him, “If you say so. You wanna get some air, though?”   
  
“I wanna go to the beach,” Claire says, blinking up at him.   
  
“Sure,” Brad says, real easy, and—thank God, thank _God_—reaches out to rest a hand on her back as she pushes off the wall. “We can do that,” he says.  
  
  
  
  
The ocean is so pretty Claire almost can’t stand it. There’s a big moon floating on the waves, riding them in, crashing to white foam on the shore, then picking itself up, putting itself back together, and surfing back out into the soft black water. It’s windy on the beach, enough that Claire wishes she had a sweater or something, but at least she’s standing close to Brad, who’s big and warm and who kept his hand in the small of Claire’s back the whole way down here, making sure she didn’t trip. “Voila,” Brad says. “Got your beach right here.”  
  
“It’s pretty,” Claire says. She shifts back a little, closer to Brad. “Do you like it?”   
  
“The beach?” Brad says. “Yeah, Claire. It’s real nice.”  
  
It’s quiet down here, away from the house, just the sound of the waves and the wind. “I was trying to find you,” Claire says, before remembering that she wasn’t gonna say that—not to him, not even to herself.   
  
“I just got here,” Brad says. “You looked like you were having fun though.”  
  
“I was.” Claire crosses her arms over her chest, shivering a little. “Amiel and Andy wanna start a fusion restaurant together.”  
  
Brad makes a sound halfway between a snort and a laugh. “I’d pay to see that,” he says. Then: “I meant, with Delany. You guys were having fun.”  
  
“I guess,” Claire says. She tries to remember what she and Delany were talking about. “He wanted to DJ… he’s a DJ,” she says, and laughs.  
  
“Oh, great,” Brad says. “That guy—”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothin’,” Brad says.   
  
The ocean shushes up against the sand. “What?” Claire says again.  
  
Brad sighs. “Fucking nothing,” he says. “Seriously nothing. I’m just being a jackass. Study with the guy all you want, I don’t care.”  
  
“Why would I study with Delany?” Claire asks. “He’s gonna be in Rhode Island.”  
  
“Jesus,” Brad says after a moment. “You really are wasted.”  
  
“I am not,” Claire says, and shivers again.  
  
“You cold?” Brad asks. “We can go inside.”  
  
“I’m not cold,” Claire says, even though she maybe is—cold or something like it. “Did you have fun this afternoon?”  
  
“Sure,” Brad says.  
  
“Really?”  
  
Brad laughs. He sounds tired. “Yeah, really,” he says. “Nice weather, good company, coupla clams, what’s not to like?”  
  
Claire feels drunker than before, somehow, even though she hasn’t had anything in—she doesn’t know how long. She doesn’t know what time it is. She doesn’t know anything, she thinks, which is freeing in this way she couldn’t explain right now if she tried. “I really wanted you to have fun,” she says earnestly.  
  
“Well, I did,” Brad says.  
  
“And I don’t care about Delany,” Claire says.   
  
Brad shifts behind her. “I don’t care if you care about Delany,” he says. “Claire, seriously, you got goosebumps.”  
  
“I’m _fine_,” Claire says, and finally turns around, which she’s been wanting to do forever, for hours, even though the ocean’s so pretty, even though the moon looks big enough to take a bite out of. Brad is pretty too—no—Brad looks big enough—no. Brad looks good. Even thinking that is overwhelming. Brad looks _good_. “I feel fine,” Claire says, dropping her arms to her sides. Her brain is running a slideshow where each slide makes the breath catch in her throat. Brad’s hand on her shoulder, Brad’s hand on her back. Brad’s face now, a little perplexed, hair curling out from under his hat.   
  
“When you’re drunk,” Brad says, “you can’t always tell so good if you’re fine or not. And you are _drunk_, Saffitz. I mean, you are blitzed.”  
  
“I think I’d know if I was blitzed,” Claire says.  
  
“Nobody ever knows if they’re blitzed. That’s the problem. You could be cold enough to get hypothermia or something,” Brad says. His voice is rough, like he’s trying not to talk too loud, which he can’t do—even when Brad’s using his indoor voice, you can hear it about a mile away. “And you wouldn’t even know it. You know? So we should go inside.”  
  
“Is it cold enough to get hypothermia?” Claire whispers.   
  
Brad still looks serious. “Nah,” he says. “But I’d give you a coat if I had one.”  
  
“Oh,” Claire says. She looks idly for that switch in her brain—_off, off, off_—but it’s still gone. It’s not there anymore. “You could,” she says.   
  
“I could what?”  
  
For a second, Claire feels sober, startlingly and genuinely. And sober Claire says: listen carefully. You are about to do something you’ll regret. You’re about to embarrass yourself so badly it’ll keep you up nights for years to come. You like this friendship? Not for long you don’t, because you’re gonna ruin _everything._  
  
Then a wave crashes onto the shore and shatters the voice, and carries it back out to sea, and Claire is (Brad was right) thoroughly, radically, ridiculously blitzed, which makes it easy to reach up, as if in a trance, and rest her hand on Brad’s face.   
  
Brad freezes. He doesn’t say anything. “I feel fine,” Claire says, so low she almost can’t hear herself, stroking her thumb softly against his cheek.  
  
“Claire—”  
  
“I’m great,” she says, and tugs him down towards her, and kisses him.  
  
For a long moment, it’s nothing—almost nothing. Claire can feel the tension in her calves as her toes curl into the sand; she can hear the ocean, clear and distant at the same time. Brad’s gone very still. His lips are dry, barely parted, and he isn’t moving at all: not kissing her back, not touching her.   
  
Claire’s kissed people before, sometimes sober, sometimes not. There haven’t been many of them, not enough to know definitively what’s normal and what isn’t. _Kiss me back_, she thinks feverishly. She really does have the spins now; it sounds like the ocean is under her, then above her, then beside her again, and she gets a hand on Brad’s shoulder to keep her balance—_kiss me back, please, _she thinks again, sick with wanting it, and thank God, her hand on his shoulder seems to jolt him into action: he takes a sharp breath, and then he’s cupping her face and he is—he _is_ kissing her, mouth moving against hers, hand warm on her cheek.   
  
She shivers again. This time it isn’t the cold, it really and truly isn’t, but maybe Brad thinks it is: he makes a noise against her mouth, low and guttural, and gets an arm around her back, a warm, hard hold, hitching her up against him and—_oh_—opening his mouth a little, stroking her face, resting his thumb against her jaw. It’s not _like_ those other kisses, the ones Claire had before—with people she can barely remember right now—the way she’d been able to think so clearly as they happened: _I like this, I don’t like that_. It’s this raw, pulsing thing between them, Brad’s hand curled against her back, the heat of his mouth, the way he’s moving with her like a wave—or she’s moving with him—the way she feels every movement like a shock through her whole body.   
  
She wants to kiss Brad forever. The water gets to keep washing up on shore forever; why shouldn’t she kiss Brad for that long? Right here, clinging to him, trying to get up on her tiptoes even as the sand slides away under her feet, trying to get closer? And why shouldn’t he touch her _more_? She wishes he’d touch her more—he’s not even stroking her back, holding her so careful, close but careful. _You can touch me anywhere_, she tries to say by kissing the corner of his mouth, melting against him. _Move your hand; slip your hand under my shirt; _and then she’s thinking about Brad cupping her breast—or Brad’s hand between her legs—  
  
The sound of the ocean recedes suddenly. For a moment Claire can’t think how, or why—and then she realizes there are voices approaching, the rustling of bodies moving through the little stretch of trees that hide this beach from the house. Which is fine—_why wouldn’t it be fine?_ she thinks vaguely, before she remembers what she’s doing—kissing Brad—she’s kissing Brad, she _kissed Brad_—and pulls back so quickly she thinks for a second she might actually puke from the awfulness: Brad’s arm dropping from her back; the shocked look on his face; his hat half off from where she was threading her fingers through his hair—  
  
“Sorry,” Claire says, stricken, breathless. She scrubs a hand across her mouth, turning away—and then Christina and Amiel are emerging onto the beach, Amiel saying, “There you are!” and there are more people following behind him, and the spell is broken. _Fuck_, Claire thinks blankly, moving towards Amiel like nothing strange has been happening here at all—and the next time she takes stock of everyone on the beach, Brad is gone.  
  
  
  
  
Christina and Amiel leave the next day in the early afternoon. “Thanks again for driving last night,” Claire says as she hugs them goodbye.  
  
Christina rolls her eyes. “Stop thanking me,” she says. “It’s not like you threw up in the car or something. I mean, not that it’s my car anyway, so…”  
  
“Please don’t talk about throwing up right now,” Claire says queasily.   
  
It’s not like she blacked out or anything last night; she shouldn’t be _that_ hungover. But she’s uncomfortably aware that the nausea rising up in her throat probably doesn’t have much to do with the beer or the jello shots or even the fucking tequila. If her stomach is unsettled—if her skin feels too tight for her body—if even being outside her house right now is making her jumpy and restless, paranoid, terrified of who she might bump into, what they might say—well, the drinking didn’t do any of that.  
  
“Seeya in September, party girl,” Amiel says cheerfully. Amiel had just as much to drink as Claire and _he’s_ doing fine. He went skinny-dipping the night before; Claire thinks he’s still riding that high. “You should tell Brad to come visit this fall,” he adds.   
  
“Amiel, shut up,” Christina says, quickly enough that Claire wonders what exactly she noticed the night before and feels her stomach flip again.  
  
“What?” Amiel says. “I like him. Didn’t you like him?”  
  
“We can talk about it on the boat,” Christina says, and, because she’s a good friend, waves apologetically at Claire and pushes him down the dock towards the walkway that leads onto the ferry.  
  
Claire doesn’t call Brad. He doesn’t call her either. Second verse, same as the first. He doesn’t call the next day, or the day after that, and he doesn’t text or email or send her a coded message via carrier pigeon. Total radio silence. Claire stays at home, eats too much Cinnamon Toast Crunch, too miserable even to go into a baking fugue, and watches _Vanderpump Rules_ for so many straight hours that her mother bans her from the living room, saying, “I cannot listen to these people yell at each other for one more minute.” Fine. Claire goes upstairs, lies down, and watches another five hours in bed instead.   
  
It had been nice, being Brad’s friend—his real, actual friend, his close friend, someone he’d trusted. Someone who’d trusted him. The wanting him stuff—she could have ignored that. Should have. The fact that she’d kissed him—_she’d _kissed _him_—and the _way_ she’d kissed him, wasted—and she’s barely even _done_ it before, the kissing thing, and never like _that—_God, she’s gotta stop thinking about the fucking kiss since she’s pretty sure it was awful anyway. _Fuck._ It had been _good_ being his friend.   
  
He hasn’t called, though, so. She fucked that up.   
  
She’s on season four of Vanderpump when the doorbell rings on Thursday afternoon. Claire’s mom has an APCC meeting and she carpools a lot, so Claire doesn’t think anything of it until her mom calls up the stairs, “Honey? Brad’s here to see you.” When Claire doesn’t answer, lying there trying to think over the adrenaline surging through her body, her mom says, “Honey?” again and Claire hears the bottom stairs creaking.  
  
“Okay!” she shouts back, and scrambles out of bed in such a panic that she shoves her laptop onto the floor. She steps on the lid to close it, cutting off the sound of a furious argument, as she crosses to look at herself in the mirror above her dresser. Her hair is a mess; her face is pale. She has dark circles under her eyes—it’s been too hot the past few days to sleep well. She looks _awful_, not that you have to look good to tell someone you’re sorry you jumped them, but—  
  
There’s a knock at her door. She clutches at the top of the dresser and rides a second wave of adrenaline before her mother says, “Claire?”  
  
“I heard you before,” she says, trying not to sound too much like she’s drowning on dry land.   
  
“Alright,” her mom says. “I have to go if I’m gonna pick Meg up before the meeting, so I’m leaving him in the living room.”  
  
“Thanks,” Claire says miserably, and rests her forehead against the cool painted wood of the dresser until she hears her mother go back downstairs again.  
  
She puts off following for seven minutes.   
  
Seven minutes is long enough to brush her hair and splash some water on her face. It’s long enough to put on a bra and a clean shirt. It’s slightly longer than a person should reasonably keep someone waiting in their foyer, she’s pretty sure, but when she sucks it up and goes downstairs, Brad doesn’t look annoyed or anything. He’s not pacing or scowling. He doesn’t look like he’s been working himself up waiting for her. He’s just standing there staring at the wall of family photos Claire’s mom has hung down the whole hall towards the kitchen. “Hey,” she says when he doesn’t turn towards her; he glances up with a jerk, like he hadn’t even heard her coming.  
  
“Hey,” he says. His face is unreadable. “I know I shoulda called first, but—”  
  
“It’s fine,” Claire says. “You want a drink? Like—water, I mean,” she adds awkwardly. She’s blushing, she’s pretty sure, which is exactly what _would_ be happening. It’s fine.   
  
“Sure,” Brad says after a pause.   
  
Claire’s thinking the whole way down the hall about how to work the conversation around to an apology. She doesn’t know how much small talk is appropriate for the situation. But she’s barely started filling a water glass before Brad says, “About the other night,” so apparently the answer is none.   
  
“Right,” she says. “God. I’m _so _sorry.”  
  
“You’re sorry,” Brad says. Claire should probably actually look at him or something, but she keeps staring into the sink instead, only turning the tap off reluctantly when the second glass is overflowing.  
  
“Yeah,” she says, steeling herself before turning to hand him a glass. Their fingers overlap for a moment; Claire makes herself hold on for long enough that the glass won’t drop, which would be mortifying—even more mortifying than, well, absolutely everything else about this. “I don’t know what I was thinking, I was just—I mean, I was drunk, so. I don’t drink that much—God, sorry. That has nothing to do with anything. I was just wasted.”  
  
“I know,” Brad says slowly. He sets his glass down on the table and scrubs his hands off on the bottom of his shirt. “I mean, that’s why I was gonna—_I’m _sorry, Claire.”  
  
“You?”   
  
“Y-eah,” Brad says. Claire’s realizing for the first time that he looks kind of awful himself. “I shouldn’t’ve even—I mean, I shoulda said, right away—shit—”  
  
“Oh my god,” Claire says, “you’re really trying to apologize to _me_?”   
  
“Yeah?” Brad says.  
  
Claire laughs. She can’t help herself. Her hands are shaking a little; she crosses her arms to hide it. The thing about the kiss is: she _remembers _it. It’s not just something she knows she did; she knows what it was like, and what it was like was her, unsteady, clinging to Brad, begging for more, begging with her whole body for him to throw her down on the beach and ravage her, and him holding her like he didn’t want her to fall. Careful, in control. Not letting her take it too far, the way she’d wanted to. “Okay, well, that’s crazy,” she says instead of trying to say any of that. “Seriously. I jumped _you_.” Brad takes a sharp breath. “Which was crazy,” she adds hurriedly, “I mean, I was like—out of my mind—it was crazy,” she repeats, hugging herself tighter. “I’m sorry. It was nuts. I won’t do it again.”  
  
“Okay,” Brad says. He opens his mouth—closes it—opens it again—then picks up his water and takes a sip. It’s a long one; he drains half the glass. Claire’s on the verge of turning to stare out the window until he—leaves? presumably leaves—when he sets the glass abruptly down again and says, “If you wanna, though.”  
  
Claire blinks. She feels like she’s back in seventh grade, learning how to diagram a sentence. _Wanna_ is referring to—something. Something one of them has said. _If you wanna_. What had she said? Do it again. It’s not like diagramming a sentence at all, she thinks, because these are _two_ sentences—_If you wanna. Do it again._—and she’s still sorting through _that_ when Brad says, “I mean, nothing serious or nothin’, just… if you wanna.”   
  
Claire can’t think of anything to say. Her brain feels buzzy and loud.  
  
“Or we can forget the whole thing—”  
  
“_No_,” Claire says, abruptly enough that Brad’s eyebrows shoot up.   
  
“No…?”   
  
Claire thinks about Brad and the hostess at Evelyn’s; Brad flirting with the waitress at the diner. She thinks about all the girls Brad talks to everyday, the way she’s wondered whether he hooks up with them, what it’s like. She’s assumed yes; she’s assumed good. Maybe if she wanted to treat herself kindly, she wouldn’t say yes to _nothing serious or nothin’_; she wouldn’t say yes to being one of any number of rebounds.   
  
She’s never wanted to treat herself kindly less in her life.   
  
“Nothing serious,” she says. It’s hard to get the words out. Her pulse is racing.   
  
“Right,” Brad says.   
  
“Just—casual,” Claire says.  
  
Brad cracks a strained smile. “Yeah, that’s what nothing serious means, Harvard.”   
  
“Because you’re not looking for anything…” Claire says, trailing off before she can start to sound like any more of a broken record. Brad frowns; when Claire rewinds the conversation, she can pretty much figure out why. She sounds—honestly like she’s baiting him. “Because _I’m_ not,” she says, aiming for breezy finality. “I mean, I didn’t even mean to—”   
  
“Yeah,” Brad says, kind of clipped. “I get it, it was crazy.”  
  
“Right,” Claire says.  
  
Brad shrugs one shoulder, a tense little gesture. “Hey, crazy ain’t always bad,” he says simply, and drinks some more water, hand tight around the glass.  
  
_Crazy ain’t always bad_. Only… well, it kind of is to Claire, or at least, it always has been before. _Claire’s_ not crazy. _Claire’s_ not adventurous. She thinks about Molly saying, “Ms Play It Safe herself?” incredulously, peering at Claire over her sunglasses, like she couldn’t begin to imagine Claire going out on a limb, taking a chance, diving into something without knowing exactly how it might turn out. Or wilder still: diving into something knowing the outcome won’t be good. Doing it anyway, just for the thrill of it.  
  
Claire doesn’t, as a rule, do things that might end badly.  
  
“Okay,” she says.  
  
“You can think about it,” Brad says, and Claire says, “No, I mean—okay. That could be fun.”  
  
Brad blinks, then cracks his knuckles and drains his water. “Could be,” he says, and clears his throat. “So… okay.”  
  
“Okay,” Claire says again.  
  
“We’ll just… do that.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Sometime.”  
  
“Yeah,” Claire says. _Claire, _please_ say _something_ halfway intelligent_, she thinks, but the idea of tackling any word longer than one syllable seems ludicrous in her current condition.  
  
“Okay,” Brad says again, and lets out a gusty sigh. “Good talk, Saffitz. Uh. I got work in an hour, so—you text me, okay? Anytime you want. Not just for, uh, fun—I mean, for fun _or_ for fun. We ain’t been to the beach in a minute, so—”  
  
“Brad,” Claire says hoarsely. He shuts up right away. His eyes are bright; he looks tenser than she’s ever seen him, afraid of making a wrong move. “There’s no one home right now,” she says after a moment. She watches that hit him, the way his face transitions from confusion to comprehension.  
  
“Yeah?” he says. He flexes his hand at his side. “You busy?”  
  
“Just working on world peace,” Claire says. “You know. Tackling the big problems. I could take an afternoon off, though, if I got a… a better offer or something.”  
  
“World peace, huh?” Brad says. Claire’s heart is thumping. It feels wrong to be staring this directly at Brad, but he’s staring back, and as she watches, he wets his lips. “C’mere, Claire,” he says finally.  
  
_Nothing serious_, Claire thinks again, and knows she’s in her grave already and only digging it deeper—but what the hell, she thinks, and comes.  
  
  
  
  
Claire kisses Brad in the kitchen. She kisses him in the hall, almost knocking a family portrait off the wall, and in the foyer, up against the front door, and then in the doorframe, door open, letting all the cold air out, so they have to close it to be conscientious, and then since they’re on the porch anyway, they keep kissing there for awhile, right out in the open where anyone could see them, until Brad pulls back and says, breathless, “Okay, I’m seriously late, I’m so late, I gotta go or I ain’t _ever _gonna go and your mom’s gonna come back and find us—”  
  
“Oh my god,” Claire says, “don’t even say that, leave,” but she kisses him again anyway.   
  
The first kiss, in the kitchen, had been weird. Brad had just stood there while she crossed to him, one hand braced against the counter, motionless, the way you’d stand waiting for a skittish animal to approach; and he’d stayed exactly that still while she reached up to touch his face again, same as the night before, until she said, “Okay, you’re making me nervous.”  
  
“Nervous why?”  
  
“Nervous because,” Claire said, and paused—but it was just Brad, she reminded herself. And it was just fun. “I don’t really know what I’m doing,” she said finally, a little petulantly. “And you’re making me do _everything_.”   
  
Brad had looked down at her very seriously for a moment, then smiled—so slow and knowing that Claire could feel it in her toes. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he repeated.   
  
“Right,” she said. She was stroking his face again—it was hard not to—and talking so quietly they might have been in hiding or something—like she was trying not to be heard. “I mean, I’ve done it before,” she added, “obviously.”  
  
“Oh, yeah, obviously,” Brad had said, and she’d said, “Is that—don’t be mean, if you think I’m _that_ bad we don’t have to—”  
  
“You’re not,” Brad cut her off.   
  
“No?”  
  
“Really, really not bad,” Brad had said. “Great, actually. A complete fuckin’ natural.”  
  
It was all very well for Brad to say things like _a complete natural _when he’d spent years doing—oh, everything, she was pretty sure. He’d been with Sarah for so long; he’d touched her so easily in public that Claire couldn’t begin to imagine what they’d done in private. She didn’t want to. She felt hot with jealousy when she thought about it, which made her feel miserably penitent in turn.  
  
“Don’t make fun of me,” she’d started to say—but Brad was already leaning down, cupping both hands to her face, and kissing her again, and even though she _didn’t_ know what she was doing—not, she reminded herself, that she needed to keep _saying_ that kind of thing to Brad—it was—God, it was just _so_—  
  
Well, anyway—“Claire,” Brad says again, pulling back. He wrenches his hands off her waist, where he’s been stroking his fingers just barely under the hem of her shirt, making her shiver and shiver. He looks disheveled; his lips are red. When she reaches up to touch her thumb very lightly to the corner of his mouth, he screws his eyes closed, makes a sound like he’s being murdered, and takes a huge step back. “I gotta go,” he says, eyes still shut, “or I’m gonna lose my job.”  
  
“Okay,” Claire says.  
  
“Not that I like my job that much,” Brad says.  
  
“You have like seven of them,” Claire says helpfully, “so—”  
  
“You’re gonna kill me. I’ll call you,” Brad says, and surges forward to kiss her just once, hard and fast, before striding to his car so quick it’s like he thinks she might chase after him. Claire’s horrified to realize she really _might_, if she keeps standing here staring at the shifting muscles of his back. She makes herself go inside and lock the door instead, collapsing back against it and touching her own mouth, dazed. She has the feeling that if she closes her eyes right now, she’ll wake up and none of it will have happened.  
  
Only—it did happen. And it keeps happening, all through the rest of July. They kiss in Claire’s kitchen _again_, in the foyer, on the front porch when Brad’s dropping her off, and then, getting adventurous, on the screened-in back porch, Claire’s parents home and hanging out in the living room—in Brad’s car—in the alley behind Evelyn’s—in the parking lot at the beach, once, before Claire says, “We can’t—Brad, seriously, Molly’s meeting us in like ten minutes.”  
  
“So?” Brad says.   
  
“So if Molly catches us making out, I’ll like—literally die,” Claire says. “I’ll never hear the end of it.”  
  
Brad’s breathing hard. He’s got her pressed up against the side of his truck, his leg between hers in this way that’s making it hard to talk or even think, except that the idea of having to discuss _this_ with Molly—well, that gets through. “Molly should mind her own business,” Brad says after a moment, in that impassive way of his, but he kisses her neck, very lightly, not leaving a mark, before pulling back and going to find the towels.  
  
Later, after they’ve spent the afternoon with Molly, not touching once—after Brad’s driven Claire home—while they’re kissing goodbye in the truck, around the corner from Claire’s driveway—Brad says, “Molly doesn’t know?”  
  
“Are you kidding?” Claire says. “Molly’s like… trust me. You don’t want Molly to know. If Molly knows something, _everyone _knows it.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s true,” Brad says, although his brow is furrowed.  
  
“So there you go,” Claire says, and leans across the gearshift to kiss him again.   
  
The truth is that Claire can’t imagine telling Molly about any of this, not least because she doesn’t want to think about the part where Molly would say, “I told you so,” and Claire would say, “It’s not like that,” and Molly would say, “Why not?” and Claire would have to say: because he doesn’t want it to be. Because we agreed to be casual. Which is _fine_. Everything’s working out fine, except that… well, except for the fact that it’s still _happening_.  
  
Claire doesn’t know exactly how she’d imagined this all playing out, but she thinks—when she _tries_ to figure it out, she thinks she figured Brad wouldn’t actually wanna do it that much. Claire isn’t particularly self-effacing as a rule but it’s clear to her that Brad has options, many of them better than herself. He could throw a dart any direction around here and probably hit a pretty girl who has a billion times more experience in this department than Claire. But somehow, whether Claire knows what she’s doing or not, the kissing is so good that they’re doing it all the time, every chance they get, hours and hours lost to Brad’s mouth on hers, his hands on her waist, and the more they kiss—  
  
“You can,” Claire murmurs, touching his hand, sliding it under her shirt. Her brain feels like fogged up glass.   
  
“Uh,” Brad says against her mouth, fingers flexing against her bare skin. She can feel his hand moving when she breathes. “Jesus.”  
  
“If you want,” Claire says, and Brad says, “Is that a joke?” sliding his hand a little further, rucking her shirt up, which is the point at which having a stick shift between them starts to seem untenable. “I’m coming over there,” Claire says breathlessly, scrambling over the armrest before Brad can finish saying, “What?”   
  
There’s a long, chaotic minute in which she’s trying to situate herself, heart racing at her own daring. She knees him so hard in the thigh that he yelps, grabbing at her hips, and says, “Hang on, I can’t find the—Claire, I gotta shove the seat back—” both of them laughing like they can’t believe what’s happening, until—  
  
“Hey,” Claire says, settling into his lap.  
  
“Yeah, hi,” Brad says. He looks dazed, hands barely resting on her thighs, like he’s afraid to touch.   
  
“Is this okay?” Claire says. She feels strangely powerful, maybe because Brad’s looking up at her like the whole thing is unbelievable, even though he’s probably been in this exact position, maybe in this exact truck, about a billion times before.   
  
“Yeah, Claire, it’s okay,” Brad says, shaking his head a little; and when she bends down to kiss him, he sighs into it, sliding one hand into her hair to get it out of her face, tugging a little in that way that makes her crazy. It’s so quiet in the car that even kissing sounds loud: she can hear heavy breathing, the shush of her own knees on the seat, the throaty noise Brad makes when she bites his lip a little, the slick sound of his tongue in her mouth, which should be gross—it’s objectively gross, Claire thinks, except that it’s not—it’s not at all—it’s so hot she can’t think straight, and when she settles more firmly into Brad’s lap—  
  
“Oh,” she says against his mouth, almost by accident.  
  
“Sorry,” Brad says roughly, but Claire’s not a moron. She isn’t shocked that he’s hard; she’s shocked at what actually feeling it is doing to her.   
  
“I like it, idiot,” she says, embarrassed, and shifts against him.   
  
“You—fuck,” Brad says. His eyes are glassy. He takes a deep breath, then nuzzles her neck, presses these soft, endless kisses against her jaw, under her ear.   
  
“I like it,” Claire says again, inanely, and Brad groans.  
  
“You’ll tell me when to stop—right?” His voice is hoarse. He feels tense underneath her, afraid to make the wrong move. She doesn’t know how to tell him there’s no wrong move, nothing he can do that she doesn’t want. She shifts against his dick, and the sound he lets out—the sharp intake of breath—makes something clench up between her legs. “Claire—right?”  
  
“Mhmm,” Claire says, and doesn’t.  
  
July gives way to August. It gets almost too hot to bear, and so humid that walking feels like swimming. Everything tastes like salt. Sometimes Brad leaves the car running while they make out, for the air conditioning, even though it makes Claire jumpy. “Someone’s gonna think we’re a getaway car,” she says.   
  
“No, someone’s gonna think we’re horny teenagers,” Brad says, grinning. “A getaway car, what the hell. You’re a crack-up, Saffitz.”   
  
“It’s not _crazy_,” Claire says. “What, you think there’s no crime around here?”  
  
“Just get over here,” Brad says, and then Claire’s in his lap and he’s sliding a hand up her shirt and she forgets to be nervous. She forgets pretty much everything when Brad’s kissing her throat, when his thumb is moving back and forth against her ribcage, under her breast.   
  
“Brad,” she says.  
  
“Mm?”  
  
“You can—you know,” Claire says. She feels trembly. She doesn’t wanna say it.  
  
It turns out she doesn’t have to. “Jesus, Claire, in my stupid truck?” Brad says, which makes her laugh, but then he’s sliding his hand up, palming her breast: a little hesitant and then, when she starts breathing harder, less tentative—“You feel so good,” he says. Claire’s breathing so hard its embarrassing her. His hand is so big, careful. “You’re so fucking pretty.”  
  
“Thanks,” Claire says stupidly, and kisses him to make him shut up. Nobody’s ever felt her up like this before. She hates that she’s wearing a bra; she has to stop wearing bras. She wants his hand on her bare breast, rolling her tight nipple between his fingers—she wants his mouth—when she thinks about doing _that_ in his stupid truck, she really does wanna die. She opens her mouth against his instead, kissing him hotly, desperately, and grinds involuntarily in his lap, trying for more friction however she can get it, until he says, tight against her mouth, “If you keep doing that—I need a minute, okay?”  
  
“Okay,” Claire says, shiveringly turned on, and rests her chin on his shoulder, closing her eyes. She can feel the warmth of her own breath on her face.  
  
The second week of August, Claire’s family goes to St Louis. They’re supposed to be down there for a week, then back on the Cape for a day, then out to western Massachusetts for another three, visiting her mom’s family. At the beginning of the summer, Claire had been excited for both trips; now she’s pretty sure she’s in nobody’s good books, she’s such bad company that whole first week—not mean or anything, not unfriendly, but absent, out of it. “Honey, are you feeling okay?” her mom keeps asking.  
  
“Fine,” Claire says, and goes back to staring out the window, or down at her plate, or into the middle distance, thinking about Brad. She’s starting to feel like some kind of sex junkie, feverish with withdrawal after just a few days. Not that she and Brad are having sex, but….  
  
_But you could be_, she thinks, and has to go to the bathroom and sit with her head between her knees for a few minutes, trying to shove that thought back into a box for some time when she isn’t supposed to be making small talk with most of her father’s side of the family.   
  
_Some time_ turns out to be later that night. Claire can’t sleep; she lies awake until almost 3am staring at the ceiling, thinking about… about… _Claire, if you can’t think it_—fine. About sex. About having sex with Brad. She’s never been naked with Brad; she’s never even taken her shirt off in front of him. The thought makes her feel half sick, half so turned on she can’t breathe, and she has to get a hand between her legs and touch herself just a little, after a while, to try and clear her brain out. She’s wetter than she’s ever been in her life already, just from thinking about it in the abstract—and then she’s imagining what it would actually be like, Brad’s mouth on her breasts, sucking red marks onto her pale skin, Brad braced over her, petting her face, Brad’s dick—Brad’s dick inside her, so big inside her, splitting her open—and she rides her hand hard until she comes with a painful shudder.   
  
The next day at breakfast, she startles out of a reverie to find her mother staring at her, disbelieving. “I said your name _seven times_,” her mom says.  
  
“I didn’t hear you,” Claire says helplessly, and tries not to turn red.  
  
On the plane back from St. Louis, Claire’s mom says, “Claire, I’m serious, are you feeling all right?”   
  
“I’m _fine_,” Claire says, even though she’s not—or maybe she is. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what it says about your mental state when you just can’t stop thinking about sex, no matter how hard you try. She tucks her hair behind her ear and tries to sound however she thinks she used to sound a few months ago, when she almost never thought about sex at all. “I don’t know, school’s starting soon. I’m just nervous, I guess. Sophomore year is harder.”  
  
“Oh, honey,” her mom says, clearly relieved to have any kind of explanation. “You don’t have to think about that yet.”  
  
“I know I don’t _have_ to,” Claire says. “But…” _Sex. Sex. Sex. _God, it’s like a _disease_. She flips through everything in the seatback pocket just for something to do.  
  
Her mom hums. Then: “You know, you don’t have to come to Aunt Gwen’s if you’d rather stay home and get your ducks in order,” she says.  
  
Claire’s stomach flips without permission. “I don’t?”  
  
“You don’t,” her mom says. “Honestly, you’ve looked so stressed all week, I wish you _would_ stay home and relax a little. Anyway, there’ll be so many cousins running around, we probably won’t even miss you.”  
  
“Thanks a lot, mom,” Claire says dryly, trying not to jitter her knee. She stares out at the clouds. She thinks about three days with no one else home. Three days, the whole house to herself. Three days—_Brad in her room, where he’s never been before—_three days—_getting a hand on Brad’s dick, her mouth on Brad’s dick—_three _days_—_Brad inside her, moving inside her, saying, “You’re so pretty, Claire—” _  
  
_Stop thinking about this right now, you fucking crazy person_.  
  
She reads a book instead. She reads a book very quietly and intently for one and a half hours, and when the plane lands, she turns her phone on and texts Brad: _Back in town. Come over tomorrow? _  
  
_i’m there_, Brad says immediately. Then: _what time? got work til 6:30_. Then: _feels like you’ve been gone a month. _  
  
_7_, Claire says, and blanks her phone screen. Her hand is shaking. She puts her phone in her pocket and tries very conscientiously to pay attention, for the first time in days, to whatever her mother’s saying.   
  
  
  
  
Claire’s parents hop in the car and head out around noon. Claire waves goodbye from the front porch, then takes a shower, then sits in the steamy bathroom thinking about possibly being sick for the better part of half an hour before she can make herself go get dressed. By 2:30, she’s jittering out of her skin with nerves, technically watching TV but barely following the thread minute to minute, too busy thinking about other things, so she gives up completely and goes into the kitchen to make cookies.   
  
One batch leads to two batches leads, somehow, to five batches, so that when Brad finally does show up, the kitchen is a mess. “What the hell happened in here?” he says, coming in through the back door. He glances around, face impassive, hands in his pockets, but when Claire says, “No one’s home,” he comes right over and kisses her, deep and crazy right away, backing her up until she hits the counter with a little oof, clinging to his shoulder.   
  
“You got flour in your hair,” he says when he pulls back.   
  
“Yeah?” Claire says, dazed. “How’s it look?”  
  
Brad grins. “Cute,” he says. “You look kinda like a skunk.”  
  
“Thanks, Brad,” she says, laughing in spite of herself.  
  
Claire’s last tray of cookies won’t be done for ten minutes. She kisses Brad again, just softly—her stomach is roiling with nerves—but within seconds, it’s crazy again, Brad’s hands on her waist, hoisting her up onto the counter. “God, warn a girl,” she says, clinging to him.  
  
“Sorry,” Brad says, even though he doesn’t sound that apologetic. “I was gonna get a crick in my neck. You’re real short, Claire.”  
  
“No,” Claire says, “you’re real tall,” and tugs him close. Kissing Brad like this is different than being in the car. She can get her legs around him, and when he shifts against her, it really feels like—well, not _like_ fucking, but—Claire’s just got brain damage, she thinks, that’s how hard it is to stop thinking about unzipping Brad’s jeans and getting his dick out right now. She clenches her hands up against his back and goes liquid against him, shifting and squirming, trying to get as close as she can.   
  
When the oven timer goes off, Brad pulls back. “I got it,” he says, and steps back with a groan, adjusting himself in his jeans. “Fuck,” he says, “sorry. Just. Long week.”  
  
For the first time, it occurs to Claire that Brad could have fucked someone while she was gone, in the exact same instant she realizes that he probably didn’t. She flattens her palms against the granite countertop with a deep breath, watching as he turns the oven off, takes the last pan of cookies out, and drops them on the stove. “When are your parents getting home?” he says, shucking the oven mitt and turning back towards her.   
  
“They’re not,” Claire says.   
  
There’s a long moment where neither of them says anything. Then: “Uh,” Brad says.  
  
He looks kind of like someone just clobbered him across the back side of his head. Claire knows the feeling. “They’re out of town for a couple days,” she says anyway.   
  
Brad takes a deep, visible breath.  
  
“So it’s just me,” Claire says. Her palms are sweating against the cold countertop. Her legs are still spread from where Brad was standing between them, rocking against her.   
  
“Yeah?” Brad says finally. He sounds cautious.   
  
“Yeah,” Claire says. Then, before she can lose her nerve: “You wanna go up to my room?”  
  
“...Yeah,” Brad says hoarsely, “okay,” and gestures as if to say: after you.  
  
  
  
  
Claire’s room isn’t that embarrassing, as childhood bedrooms go. She’s pretty sure it isn’t. She doesn’t have any trophies on display or old boy band posters hung on the walls. Her room here has always been a guest room too, so there’s not much to distinguish it from the rest of the house. There are delicate lace curtains in the windows, an old quilt on the iron-frame bed. It’s immaculately clean right now: Claire went over it with a fine-tooth comb earlier. She’d made the bed and then, worried that it looked too obvious, unmade it; now half the comforter has been artfully flung back to reveal her sheets, pale cream with little flowers. There are condoms in the side table—Claire went out and bought them earlier, from a pharmacy neither she nor her parents usually ever visit. She’d felt like a criminal.   
  
There’s a bookshelf in the corner of the room. Brad takes a step forward like he’s gonna poke through it. “Brad, do _not_ look at my books right now,” Claire says abruptly.   
  
Brad stops. He turns back towards her. “Why?” he says. “Just because I can’t read good, you don’t even want me lookin’?”   
  
“_Brad_,” Claire says. She feels a little like stomping her foot, which makes her flush even worse than she already was. Brad turns her into such a brat sometimes. She doesn’t know what it is—one second she feels so adult, the next he’s teasing her just a little and she can’t stop herself from whining.   
  
“What?” he says again, raising an eyebrow. “You got something else you want me to do?”   
  
“Can you be nice to me?” Claire says, feeling pathetic.  
  
Brad’s expression softens, darkens. He blinks a few times, staring at her. His lashes look very long. “Yeah,” he says, low, “I can be real nice,” and steps towards her, slips his arm around her waist.   
  
They kiss for a long time on Claire’s bed. They kiss for so long that twilight falls, sunlight fading to soft shadow on the bare floorboards; for so long that Claire starts to feel like she’s underwater in the cool blue light. Brad doesn’t slip a hand under her shirt, even though they’ve done that a million times now. When she nudges him into it, he kisses her deeper, mouthwateringly filthy for a moment, then pulls back. Her room is dim in that way that feels darker than actual darkness, somehow, and she can barely see his face. “What?” she says softly.  
  
“Nothin’,” he says. “Just…what’re we doing here, Claire?”  
  
“Making out,” Claire says, willing her pulse to stop racing. “I’m pretty sure. I’m not an expert.”  
  
Brad makes a noise she can’t interpret. “You kinda are,” he says, petting her side. “I mean…”  
  
“You mean my parents aren’t home,” Claire says, more calmly than she feels. “And we’re in a bed and not crammed into one seat of your truck on the side of the road where someone could knock on the window at any second. And I’m trying to get you to take my shirt off.”  
  
“Oh, is that what you’re doing?” Brad says, that faintly poleaxed look on his face again.  
  
“Yeah,” Claire says, “but I can do it myself if you want,” and—while this blank calm is still making her say and do things she never otherwise could—does.  
  
Objectively, it must be awkward: the way she has to wriggle to tug her shirt up, the way it gets stuck on her head, her hair in her face after she finally wrenches it free. But when she blinks up at Brad, he doesn’t look like it was funny, or anything to make fun of. He looks dumbstruck, so flat-out stupid that when she says, “You could take yours off too,” he just does it without even trying to protest, yanking it off in one jerky motion and flinging it onto the floor.  
  
“For the record,” Brad says, “I still think…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I don’t fucking know,” Brad says vaguely, and then he’s on top of her again, mouth hungry on hers, touching her waist, her breast, pinching her nipple through her bra, which makes her gasp and jerk up against him, knees tightening on his sides.  
  
“Was that—”  
  
“Fine,” Claire says tersely. “Can you—”   
  
“What?”  
  
“Just take it off,” she says, and buries her face in his neck. She’s so hot she feels like she might catch fire; Brad smells like sweat and salt, and she’s so afraid he’s gonna say no—no, he doesn’t want to—he’s realizing he _never_ wanted to—  
  
He takes her bra off.   
  
It’s almost like it’s happening to someone else; like it couldn’t possibly be happening to Claire. Brad unhooks her bra and slips it off and she’s clinging to him, arms round his neck, while he says, “God, Claire,” kissing her so fervently, pressed close up against her, then drawing back to look at her with this uncertain expression, like he’s not sure he should. “You look—you’re so fucking pretty,” he says, and then his thumb is rough on the soft peak of her nipple, flicking at it. It tightens up so quickly it almost hurts. “Jesus,” Brad says.   
  
“Can you…” Claire’s face is gonna burn off. “With your mouth,” she manages.  
  
Brad closes his eyes. “Twist my arm,” he says, and shifts down the bed until he can suck her into his mouth, quick and hard—like nothing she’s ever felt before. She drops her hand to his head, and then somehow—she doesn’t mean to—her fingers are in his hair, she’s cupping the back of his skull while he sucks at her. It’s like he has a direct line to her cunt—every time his mouth moves against her, she can feel it throbbing between her legs. She’s making noises—whining, she realizes, flushing harder than before—but she can’t stop, squirming against him, petting the nape of his neck and saying, “Yeah,” and, “good,” and “oh,” over and over again, hips hitching up involuntarily.  
  
After a minute, Brad pulls off and presses his face to her sternum. “Claire—”  
  
“Come here,” she says. She doesn’t know what he’s gonna say; she doesn’t want to. She tugs at him until he groans and moves, obedient, and then they’re kissing again, filthier this time. Claire can’t stop thinking about his mouth on her, her breast in his hand, the way his whole back had been tense like he was trying not to rut against her when she _wants_ him to, she wants it—“Claire,” he says again.  
  
“Please,” she says brainlessly, squirming against him. She’s stroking down his neck, then petting down his chest. When her hand reaches his jeans, they both jolt.  
  
“Jesus,” Brad says again, right up against her mouth, and doesn’t say anything else when she moves fumblingly to flick his button open, tug his zipper down. She can hear him breathing; his chest is moving against hers. “Claire—”  
  
“I’ve told you a zillion times,” she says, trembling, “I like it,” and reaches into his briefs to wrap her hand around his dick.   
  
She’d known it was gonna be big. But knowing is different than feeling it for real, hot and thick in her hand, throbbing and jerking a little when she gets her fingers around it. Claire doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing but it doesn’t seem to matter much—when she moves her hand a little, tentatively, Brad groans and says, “Oh Christ,” jerking forward in her grip, and then, “sorry—shit. Fuck.”  
  
Claire just kisses him, messy and off-center. She didn’t bother to get his jeans actually off, and she’s shoving him back onto the bed, trying to find an angle that’ll let her actually jerk him off. She winds up straddling him, tugging his pants down and burying her face in his neck, breathing hard, while he shimmies them the rest of the way off—and then she pulls back far enough to actually get a look at him, his dick slapping against his stomach, red and wet at the tip, dripping a little. She goes to get her hand around it again; then, thinking twice, she licks her own palm first.   
  
“Claire, _Jesus_,” Brad says. He’s holding himself very still against the bed, like he doesn’t want to scare her. He’s always acting like that. It drives Claire crazy. It makes her want to prove that she’s not scareable; that she can take it, whatever he wants to give her.  
  
“Like this?” she says, wrapping her fingers around him and stroking up. When she rubs her thumb across the head of his dick, she can feel him pulse a little in her grip, more slick dripping up. She works her fist up and back, until he’s wet all over and it’s easy to keep jerking him, slow and careful.   
  
“Yeah,” Brad says raggedly. “That’s—fuck. Claire, you’re gonna kill me.”  
  
“A handjob’s gonna kill you?” Claire says, a little embarrassed to find herself almost whispering it, like she’s saying a bad word.  
  
Brad doesn’t seem to notice. His jaw is tight. His chest is so broad it’s making Claire’s mouth dry, his stomach heaving a little while she jacks him. “No, you’re—the way you look—you got no idea how you look right now, honey,” he says.   
  
“Uh,” Claire says, tightening her grip.  
  
“Prettiest tits I’ve ever seen,” Brad says. His voice is so rough, eyes dark, blinking up at her. “Wanna get my mouth on you again and just—suck you till you’re sore.”   
  
“Oh,” Claire says faintly. She glances down at her hand on his cock, rubs her thumb under the head, right where there’s a vein that keeps pulsing and jerking. Everything he says—every time he says something—she can feel herself getting wetter and wetter, so wet it’s uncomfortable to still be wearing shorts, damp and hot, so wet she can’t help but think about how Brad’s dick, this big in her hand, would feel inside her. How if she shoved her shorts off right now and sank down onto it—it would hurt, she’s pretty sure. God. It would hurt, it would feel too big, but she could get a hand on Brad’s chest and just sink back real slow—and maybe Brad would bend up and kiss her—her tit—maybe he’d suck on her tit while she took him inside her, or rub his thumb against her clit, until—  
  
“Claire—”  
  
“Am I doing it wrong?” Claire says, and Brad says, “What? Jesus Christ, no, you feel—I’m losing my fucking mind, sweetheart, I just—”   
  
“Why do you have to ask so many questions?” Claire says. She can feel one coming. She strokes his dick again, cunt clenching on nothing as she blinks down at him. The overhead fan is on; her nipples are so hard that just the air is making them ache. She wants Brad’s mouth again. She wants…  
  
“Because,” Brad says tightly. “I just wanna know what you want.”  
  
“This,” she says. Brad doesn’t say anything. “This is embarrassing,” she says.   
  
“If you can’t say it—”  
  
“Please don’t treat me like I don’t know anything,” Claire says. Her throat feels tight, closed-up. “I just want _this_, okay? I wanna touch your—your dick, I want to do this for however long you want, and I want you to fuck me, okay? I want you to—to touch me, and put your dick in me—”  
  
“_Fuck_,” Brad says, arching up a little underneath her. She strokes him again; she can practically hear him gritting his teeth.   
  
“—I want you to let me—I could suck you, if you want, or you could—”  
  
“That’s not nothing, Claire,” Brad says through gritted teeth.   
  
“Yeah,” Claire says, “but. I want it. It’s what I want.”  
  
Brad doesn’t say anything.  
  
“Brad—”  
  
“C’mere,” he says.   
  
Claire takes her hand off his dick reluctantly, moving a little until she can kiss him again. When she bends down, her breasts just brush his chest; he groans and reaches up to cup one like he can’t help himself.  
  
“You think you want it now,” he says, even though his hand is already on her, even though his hips are hitching up against her. It’s like he’s reciting lines from a speech he thinks he’s obligated to give her. “But—”   
  
“It’s not like I’ve been waiting for some perfect situation or something,” Claire says. She’s so wound up she’s almost vibrating. “It’s not like—that’s fine for some people, but I don’t care, it’s not like I’m waiting for—for marriage or something—”  
  
“Yeah, I got _that_,” Brad says.  
  
“—it’s just not a big deal—”  
  
“Yeah, well, maybe it is to _me_,” Brad snaps.   
  
The fan is so loud. “What does that mean?” Claire says blankly.   
  
For a moment, Brad doesn’t move, arched against her, tense. Then he drops back against the bed, head on the pillow. “Nothing. I just—if we do. That.” He pauses for a long moment. “I’d just fucking hate it if you said later—y’know, that you wish we hadn’t.”  
  
Claire’s eyes have adjusted to the darkness and she can see Brad better now: the familiar lines of his face, that blank, impassive expression that makes people like Molly say, “You know Brad—stuff rolls right off him.” Molly thinks that because Brad wants her to. Brad makes his face this smooth and unreadable so that people _can’t_ say how he feels. Claire’s seen it before plenty of times but she’s never had this feeling like he’s making it at _her_. She wants to put her hand on his cheek; she wants him to turn into it, to kiss her palm. She wants him not to shut her out, ever. _I know you_, she wants to say, _I actually _know_ you, so don’t hide from me_.   
  
“Claire?” Brad says uncertainly.  
  
His face looks smooth and young. Claire’s been thinking recently he’d look nice with a beard; she hasn’t told him. Maybe she should. But what will it mean coming from her? Why should Brad care what she thinks when anyway, she’d think he looked good if he grew a goatee or a handlebar mustache, or if he got a full face tattoo; she’d think he looked nice no matter _what _he did, because she—because—  
  
“I won’t wish we hadn’t,” Claire promises, blinking, and shoves off him for just long enough to strip out of her shorts.  
  
She doesn’t know how long she kisses him after that, both of them naked, Brad shaking under her, trying not to rut up against her even though she wants it. Brad’s mouth, wet and hot on her tit again, sucking at her until she’s whimpering, making the most mortifying sounds, except that Brad just groans against her, worrying the pink nub of her nipple between his teeth, pulling off and saying, “You like that, honey?” in a voice so low and rough she can feel it in her toes. And then he’s kissing her other places to: the dip of her shoulder, which shouldn’t feel good but it does—it _does_—and the hollow of her throat, which makes her gasp, and he pulls her close, chest to chest, and sucks at her earlobe, too, which hits her almost harder than any of it.  
  
“That does it for you, huh?” Brad says, clutching her close and nuzzling at her, breathing hard.  
  
Claire makes an unearthly noise. She feels boneless. She’s vaguely aware that his hand is on her back, and that it’s moving, lower and lower until he’s cupping her ass, hitching her closer.   
  
“You want my mouth on you?” he says, low and rough against her ear.  
  
“Uh,” Claire says. Her breasts feel sore and oversensitive against his chest. When he scrapes his teeth against her earlobe, she can’t think, but—  
  
“I wanna,” he says, which means she wants it too, and next thing she knows he’s between her legs, resting his hands on her thighs. He stays there for a long moment, doing nothing—for so long that Claire blinks her eyes hazily open and shoves up on her elbows. He’s just staring at her.  
  
“Stop looking at me like that,” Claire says.  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“Like—I don’t know,” Claire says, squirming. She keeps expecting Brad to grin, to make a joke, and he keeps not doing it, blinking up at her so intensely it would probably feel like being naked even if she weren’t actually.  
  
“You look good,” Brad says. He tightens his grip, just barely pushing at her, but her legs fall apart easy anyway. Brad doesn’t glance down. He’s still meeting her eyes, which is somehow making Claire feel more seen and skittish than anything else.   
  
“Thanks,” she says after a long moment.  
  
“Your parents raised you real polite, Saffitz,” Brad says—and then he’s rubbing his thumb across her clit, making a satisfied little noise when she jolts with surprise. “Jesus you’re wet,” he says. His voice has gone low and rough. “You want my mouth?”  
  
“Yeah,” Claire says shakily, grabbing at his shoulder. She lets her legs fall further apart, shivering when Brad’s fingers flex against the thigh he’s still gripping.   
  
“I got you,” he says again, settling back further on the bed, and buries his face in her.   
  
It’s not like anything Claire’s felt before—not like rocking in Brad’s lap looking for friction, not like the feeling of her own hand. Brad’s tongue is rough and foreign, licking at her so slow, licking inside her and then pressing hard against her clit, making her shout and twist her fingers up in the sheets. He eats her out like he can’t get enough of it, burying his face in her, and when she can’t help reaching out to pet at his head, thighs tightening involuntarily against him, he just moans and goes at it harder. It goes on for so long, so slow and careful, that it’s a shock when he finally pulls back a little, face glistening wet from her cunt, and slides a finger into her, slow and careful, blinking up like she’s just gotta say if she doesn’t like it—but she does—she does—she wants to die about his face, all wet from licking her out. She keeps clenching up on his finger, clenching and clenching while he moves it inside her, nuzzling at her clit, but it’s not _enough_—“More,” she says, tense, “can you—”   
  
“Yeah,” Brad says, “you’re so wet it’s like nothing, babe,” and gives her another.   
  
Time is nothing. Time is just—nothing. Claire blinks up at the overhead fan. It’s fully dark out. She’s trembling all over. “That’s it, honey,” Brad says, “come on,” moving his fingers in her so slow—too slow—slow and thick, stretching her out for a long time, stroking this spot inside her that makes her go loose and crazy at the same time. After awhile, his thumb’s on her clit so she’s riding his hand, fucking herself, almost, she thinks, shifting forward again, trying to get more—deeper—“I got you, Claire, come on,” Brad says, rubbing his thumb against her, until she’s bearing down on his hand and coming with a shock. And then he’s moving up the bed again, rubbing his face against the pillowcase, except that she wants it—dragging him close, even though he’s all damp, and kissing him, filthy and open-mouthed, loose and sweet. She feels like she’s floating and even though she just came—  
  
“Come on,” she says.   
  
“You want it?” Brad says, mouth against her ear. It makes her shiver all over. “You want me to give it to you?”  
  
“Yeah,” Claire says.   
  
“You don’t gotta,” Brad says, even though his dick’s so hard against her leg that it feels almost inevitable. “You can—you said—you’d look so pretty sucking my dick, like you said, or—”   
  
“You said,” Claire tells him, barely recriminatory, because she can tell he’s gonna give in, and—  
  
—he does. She doesn’t know how long they do that, kissing slow and nasty, saying, “I don’t have to,” and, “please” and “you want it?” and “how bad do you want it?”, shifting against each other, Brad’s hand on her tit—Brad’s fingers in her pussy again—and then, finally, the head of his cock against her, right where she’s dripping and already a little sore, just from his fingers—his dick nudging into her, achingly slow, and huge.   
  
“Too much?” he says, breathless. He’s holding himself so still. She can feel his hips trying to move, the way he’s stopping them. She wants it. She wants—  
  
“Good,” she says. Her voice is hoarse. “Great. Come on. Please. Can you please—”  
  
Brad kisses her temple. “Uh huh,” he says, and keeps sinking into her, real slow. He was big in her hand; he’s bigger inside her, almost too big to take, it feels like. “Okay?” he keeps saying, gentle.   
  
_No_, she almost says, and can’t because it would scare him, when she doesn’t mean it like—like no. Like no, don’t do it anymore, or no, I don’t want it. She means no like—like she’s never felt anything like this. Like she thought it would be good but not this good; intense but not this intense. No, she means, like she’s worried she’ll never want anyone again, anyone who won’t be this careful or tender—who won’t want her the way Brad wants her, right now, in this moment. Deeper inside her. His cock jerking; his eyes screwed shut, the way he says, “Oh God, Claire, I just.” The way he buries his face in his shoulder and says, “I wanna make it last. I wanna make it good. Jesus Christ. You’re so fucking tight. It’s gotta be good for you, honey, or I’m gonna fucking die.”  
  
“It’s good,” Claire says, and tilts her hips up to take him deeper anyway.   
  
After all that, he doesn’t fuck her for that long. He can’t. By the time she says, “you can—move, okay,” he’s sweating like crazy, braced over her, trembling with the effort of holding back.   
  
“Does it hurt?”   
  
“Yeah,” Claire says, “but—good,” and Brad says, “Good, okay—look at you—Claire,” drawing back, so careful, and sliding all the way back in again. It _is_ like being split in half. It _is_ too much. And it’s just enough, too—and it’s making her whole, somehow, too—and she’s locking her legs around him, urging him on, saying, “come on,” and begging him to move, so he moves, these long, careful strokes, over and over again until he freezes up without warning and pulses inside her, dropping his forehead to her shoulder, jerking spasmodically for a long minute until he slows and stops.   
  
Claire thinks she could come again if she got a finger on herself again right now. She will. She strokes his back for a while first, pets the nape of his neck, gentle and slow.  
  
Afterwards—when she’s come on his fingers again, so hard she almost started to cry—when he’s tied the condom off and dropped it onto the floor, laughing tiredly at her, “Brad, gross”—when he’s curled towards her in the bed, his hand heavy on her hip—he says, “It was okay?”  
  
“Uh,” Claire says vaguely, shifting her head on the pillow, “yeah.”   
  
Brad shakes her a little. “Well, I don’t fucking know,” he says. Claire’s almost too tired to keep her eyes open. She should get up and shower, maybe—the insides of her thighs are sticky and she’s covered in cooling sweat, shivering a little under the overhead fan—but she can’t make herself move. Brad sounds—something. He sounds something but she doesn’t know what.   
  
“It was great,” she says, and yawns. “It was perfect. Go to sleep.”  
  
“Okay, bossy,” he says, as if from a great distance—and she’s the one who passes out.  
  
  
  
  
Brad wakes Claire up at 6AM, which is the first thing that goes wrong the morning after.   
  
“Mmph,” Claire says, blinking her eyes open and shutting them again almost immediately against the sun, which has just begun to slant slyly through the window, warm on her face.   
  
“Hey,” Brad says from—somewhere. Claire blinks again and frowns. “You awake?”  
  
The voice is coming from behind her. There’s an arm slung across her side; a hand on her stomach. And—_oh._ Claire shivers. Brad’s pressed up against her back, lips soft on the sensitive nape of her neck, and as she’s waking up to that reality, he hitches her even closer, rolling his hips against hers and—oh to that too, Claire thinks, sucking in a little gasp of air.   
  
“Claire?”   
  
“Yeah,” she says, voice still sleep rough, “I’m awake now,” and tips her head forward a little, encouraging him to kiss her neck more purposefully. He sucks at her a little, bares his teeth: it sends a hot jolt down the length of her back, turning her whole body to liquid.   
  
“I got work in an hour,” Brad says after a minute.  
  
“Mm?”  
  
“So I gotta go soon,” Brad says.  
  
“Mm,” Claire says, shifting back against him.  
  
“Claire,” he says, pained.  
  
“What?”   
  
“You can go back to sleep if you want,” he says. His hand is moving on her stomach, dipping under the waistband of her shorts. “I just didn’t wanna sneak out on ya.”  
  
“I don’t wanna go back to sleep,” Claire says hoarsely, and squirms until his hand slips down further—and it turns out that after you’ve done this kind of thing once, the second time is easy.   
  
Afterward, Brad lies with his head on her stomach, breath slowing. Claire threads her fingers through his hair. She feels sore all over, shivery with it, loose and alive. And she’s starving. As she lies there squinting against the sun, her stomach rumbles and Brad laughs exhaustedly, shifting to pin her when she squirms away from him, embarrassed. “Guess I did a good job,” he says, kissing her shoulder.   
  
“Guess you did,” Claire says, flushing, and pushes him onto the mattress, laughing. “You’re gonna be late for work.”  
  
She tucks the sheets around her as Brad gets dressed. There’s something illicit-feeling about watching him wander around the room half-naked, shoving back the lace curtains to get a look at the sky.   
  
“How long you got the house to yourself again?” he asks after he’s rescued his shirt from where it landed under her dresser the night before.  
  
“A couple days.”   
  
Brad scratches the back of his neck, grinning. “Not super safe for you to be hanging around here alone, probably,” he points out. When Claire raises an eyebrow, he says, “Lotta crazies out there, that’s all I’m saying!”   
  
“You know anyone who might be willing to come over and protect me?” Claire asks, wriggling her toes against the mattress.  
  
“Not off the top of my head,” Brad says cheerfully, “but I’ll ask around down at the docks.” Claire rolls her eyes and throws a pillow at him. “Seriously,” he says, “I’ll come over later. If you want.”  
  
“Sure,” Claire says, and ducks her head to half-hide a smile. Everything is so soft and warm and nice that she almost can’t stand it—which of course is when it all goes wrong.   
  
Brad’s been standing by the bedroom door grinning at her, trying and failing to leave. But when she’s just about wrestled her face under control, and glances back up, the smile has faded from his face. He looks like he’s deciding whether or not to say something, and when he does finally open his mouth, his brow is still furrowed a little in indecision.  
  
“Y’know,” he says, and hesitates again—then shrugs and says, “If you wanted to come over to my place sometime…” He makes a hand gesture that doesn’t mean anything in particular to Claire.  
  
“Oh,” Claire says. She tucks the sheets closer around her shoulders. Brad still lives with his parents—that’s half the reason he’s working so many jobs right now, he’s told her: so he can get his own place, here or somewhere else, if he moves, which he’s not sure he’s gonna. “Are your parents out of town too?” she says finally, half-joking—but she knows her tone is off—nervous and on-edge—even before he frowns harder and says, “Nah, but—Ma’d love to see you I bet. Sometime. If you wanted.”  
  
Claire’s not sure she could explain what’s happening in her head if she tried. All the easy happiness of an hour earlier has disappeared; her mouth tastes sour. Brad looks so uncertain, hands jammed into his pockets. His hair is a mess from where she had her hands in it. “Maybe,” she says finally. “Sometime.”  
  
Brad seems somehow to shove his hands deeper into his pockets. “Could be fun,” he says. “Come over, see my room—fair’s fair. Maybe go do something.”  
  
“We do stuff all the time,” Claire says.  
  
“Well, we could do it—I dunno, Claire,” Brad says, a little edge of frustration in his voice. “Just—something nice, I mean.”  
  
“—You don’t have to do this,” Claire says after a moment.  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“I mean that just because we had sex, you don’t have to act like things are different than they are,” Claire says.   
  
Brad’s jaw tenses up. “Oh?” he says noncommittally.   
  
“It was just sex,” Claire says. Her stomach hurts. Even the sun has slid off the bed, like it doesn’t want to be anywhere near this conversation. “It doesn’t change anything.”  
  
“Right,” Brad says flatly after a moment. “Sure.”  
  
The thing is… Claire’s remembering how Brad had sounded as she was falling asleep. What had he said? _Was it good_? In that voice like, if she said _no_, he’d find a way to turn back time and fix it. Brad, she’s pretty sure, lost his virginity to someone he loved—and whatever they did last night, whatever he said was fine—she’s sinkingly sure that he’s starting to regret it, or at least to wish… well. To wish her first time had been the same as his. To wish he could make it so.   
  
She’s pretty sure Brad’s thinking: well, Claire’s _here_. She’s here, and they did _that_. He feels bad that they did it. He feels bad that he doesn’t love her. He’s thinking: why shouldn’t he take her home, or take her out, give it a try, see what happens? Why shouldn’t he see if it’s something after all—which it won’t be?   
  
It’s fine for him to try it out and figure out real quick he doesn’t want it. For him to try it and wake up and think: what the hell have I been doing hanging around here all summer, when I already love someone? When I oughta leave right now and try to win her back?  
  
That would all be fine for him.  
  
It just wouldn’t be fine for Claire.  
  
“Sorry,” Claire says, “I just think—”  
  
“It’s fine,” Brad says, cutting her off. He pulls his hands out of his pockets finally and raps on the door frame. “It’s—whatever.”  
  
“You’re _really_ gonna be late for work,” Claire says.   
  
“Yeah,” Brad says, but he doesn’t move. “It’s just—”  
  
“I don’t want to,” Claire says before she can stop herself. Her heart is racing; she’s clutching the sheets so tightly it feels like she might tear a hole in them. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for things to get—any more complicated than this.”  
  
“I didn’t even say anything, Claire,” Brad says. She can’t make herself look at him. She stares at her own feet instead.   
  
“Sorry,” she says.  
  
There’s a long moment of silence. “Do you ever think,” Brad says, and stops. “I mean, have you ever considered—”  
  
“Maybe we shouldn’t do this anymore,” Claire says.   
  
For a moment, she isn’t even sure she’s the one who said it. She doesn’t know where the words came from. Then she thinks, oh, that’s my voice—and oh, Brad looks like he’s been slapped—and oh, I shouldn’t say anything else, _please_ don’t let me say anything else—except that her mouth is already open, and she’s already adding: “Maybe you were right. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”  
  
“The sex?” Brad says in a tone she can’t begin to interpret.  
  
“Any of it,” she says hollowly.   
  
Brad doesn’t say anything.  
  
He doesn’t say anything for a long time.   
  
Claire stares at her toes. She stares at the sheets. She thinks about how Brad had looked the night before, kissing her hip, calling her sweetheart in that easy way of his, like it was nothing, because it was nothing. It wasn’t anything to him.   
  
“Whatever you want, Claire,” Brad says finally.  
  
Claire blinks rapidly. She closes her eyes for a long moment. “Are you mad?” she says.  
  
“No,” he says. “I’m not mad.”  
  
“It’s not you,” she says.  
  
He laughs at that—a harsh, guttural noise. “Okay,” he says.   
  
“And we can still be—I mean, we’re still friends,” Claire says. She feels like she’s gonna puke: worse than having a hangover. Worse than almost anything she’s ever felt before. _Brad’s hand on her face. Brad pushing inside her, gentle, saying, I’ve got you_—  
  
“Yeah, Claire,” Brad says tiredly, “we’re still friends,” and slips on his sandals; raps the doorframe again; leaves.  
  
  
  
  
Claire’s only on the Cape for one more week before heading back to school.  
  
It’s awful. Well, it’s easy—it’s easy and it’s awful. She stays at home, mostly. She has to pack; she has to spend time with her parents; she has to not see Brad, which is the thing she can’t say, but nobody asks anyway.   
  
_Yeah, we’re still friends_, Brad had said. It’s not that she doesn’t believe him; Brad never lies. If she ran into him at the pharmacy or the fish market or the diner, he’d say, “Hey, Claire, how’s it going?” He’d be perfectly kind and polite; he’d make conversation about the heat, ask after her parents. And he’d say, “When you headed back to Harvard?” like it was nothing, nothing that mattered any which way to him, which would hurt because _Claire _couldn’t be perfectly kind and polite if she ran into Brad at the pharmacy or the fish market or the diner. _Claire_ couldn’t discuss the heat. She couldn’t say, “Any big plans for the fall?” She couldn’t treat him the way she used to. She can’t _remember _how she used to treat him.   
  
Still friends—she just doesn’t know how to do that.  
  
She stays home. She packs. She hangs out with her parents. She doesn’t see Brad at all.  
  
She does see Molly once before leaving town. “Let’s go to the diner,” Molly says, but Claire makes her come over to cook out instead, which is nicer anyway, she reasons.   
  
“We should’ve had a big end of summer thing,” Molly says, sitting on the picnic table, swinging her legs while Claire pokes at the grill.   
  
“Yeah. August has just been kinda crazy,” Claire says vaguely.  
  
Molly frowns. “Crazy how?”  
  
“Just—I don’t know,” Claire says. She’s too tired to come up with an actual excuse. She rotates an ear of corn. The sausages are starting to sizzle.   
  
“_I _don’t think August has been crazy,” Molly says. “_I _think August has been boring. I have been bored out of my _skull_ all August. I’ve barely even seen you. I’ve barely seen _anybody_. I think Andy has like—a secret boyfriend or something, he never even wants to go dancing anymore.”  
  
Claire wants to ask about Brad so badly she can taste the question in her mouth. She grits her teeth against it. “Well, you know Andy,” she says instead.   
  
“...Yeah,” Molly says incredulously, “I know he likes to _dance_. God, what is going on with you? Earth to Claire!”  
  
“Nothing’s going on with me,” Claire says automatically.  
  
“_Something_ is,” Molly says. “You’re a friggin’ space cadet tonight. That corn is, like, actually burning, by the way.”   
  
Claire gets the corn off the grill. For once, Molly doesn’t keep digging—she’s been compiling a list of indicators that Andy’s seeing someone on the sly, and makes Claire go through them one by one while they eat. It’s good that she isn’t interrogating Claire—great, even, since Claire doesn’t want to answer any questions about—about anything—except—  
  
God, except that Molly doesn’t ask a single thing she normally would. She doesn’t say, “How’s Brad? I can’t believe you wasted your shot this summer.” She doesn’t say, “Seriously, are you okay?” She doesn’t say “What aren’t you telling me?” when the answer is _everything_, and for once, Claire actually wants to—no matter how embarrassing it ends up being, saying, you were right—you’ve been right this whole time.  
  
But Molly doesn’t ask and doesn’t ask and doesn’t ask. She just hugs Claire tight at the end of the night and says, “If you don’t come visit me this year, I’m gonna s_cream_.”  
  
“Noted,” Claire says, lump in her throat, and keeps waving goodbye the whole time Molly’s seven-point-turning out of the driveway.   
  
She heads back to Boston two days later.   
  
On the way out of town, they drive past the beach she and Brad used to visit most often. It’s a flat, still day and even the seagulls look unhappy, wheeling in tight circles above the gray water. It’s misting lightly; everything looks blurry and unreal through the passenger seat window. Claire turns the radio up. There’s a new switch on the side of her brain these days, too: when she fiddles with it, she can make her mind go as dim and staticky as the sky outside. She does that now. It feels like the whole summer never even happened, she thinks, and rests her head on the window, watches the water as it recedes into the distance.  
  
  
  
  
Claire had been lying when she told her mom sophomore year would be harder, so it shocks her a little when it actually is. There’s no reason it should be. It’s a warm September; she likes her classes; she’s rooming with Christina again, which is the best; and everywhere she looks, freshmen are wandering around, lost and unhappy, knowing nothing, which _should_ be heartening, except that none of it makes her feel good. “God, it’s great not to be stupid campus babies anymore,” Christina says, but Claire just shrugs. She doesn’t care one way or the other.   
  
Delany texts her a couple times to see if she wants to go to a concert with him, or get a coffee with him, or, what seems like a last ditch effort to meet her on her level, whether she wants to hang out somewhere and study sometime. She makes up a couple of excuses, then blanks him. If Brad hadn’t come along at that party, she thinks, staring at his most recent message—about some food fashion show he’s hitting up on Saturday—she doesn’t even know what that _means_—well, if Brad hadn’t come along, maybe she _would_ have hooked up with Delany, since she was clearly in the mood to make a big mistake. She wonders if Brad wishes that’s what had happened—since at the end of the day, she only caused him a lot of trouble.  
  
Molly texts Claire a couple times too. Claire’s almost worse about responding to those than she is about responding to Delany, and she can’t even figure out why. She feels so knotted up inside that she doesn’t know where one problem ends and the next begins.   
  
“Hey,” Christina says, one Thursday evening. She’s getting ready to go out to a party Claire’s already refused approximately seventeen times to attend. “What’s going on with you?”   
  
“Right now?” Claire says. “Watching TV.”  
  
“Shut up,” Christina says, glancing away from the mirror. “You know what I mean.”  
  
“No,” Claire says. She keeps her eyes on the screen. “I don’t.”  
  
Christina sets her lipstick down. “I mean you seem really unhappy,” she says flatly, and fixes Claire with a look that’s somehow sympathetic and unimpressed at the same time.   
  
“My classes are hard,” Claire says.  
  
“No, they’re not.”  
  
“How would you know?” Claire says snidely, and Christina says, “Claire, we’re in like, three of the same sections. I mean, it’s fine, I’m not gonna make you talk about it if you don’t want to, I’m just saying—”  
  
Later, after she’s left, Claire stares at the ceiling for a long time. All September, she’s been feeling flat and exhausted. She goes to class, it’s fine. She goes to dinner, it’s fine. She goes to the library, fine—everything’s fine except that it feels like one of those dune hikes that go on forever and ever—how, just as you think you must be near the ocean, another three hills rise up in front of you. She and Brad had gone on one of those together in late July; they’d made a wrong turn somewhere, ended up lost, retraced their steps, and after an hour, her calves were so sore from hiking uphill through sand that Brad said, “Saffitz, if I give you a ride, you gonna stop whining?” and crouched to offer her his back. She’d gotten on, more for an excuse to touch him than anything. She’d wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m _not _gonna stop complaining,” she murmured in his ear, which made him laugh almost too hard to carry her; and later, when they finally made it to a deserted beach, a whole pod of seals swam by, surfacing at intervals to bob in the waves and stare unblinkingly towards land.  
  
“See?” Brad said—the hike had been his idea. “Nice, ain’t it?”  
  
“Great,” Claire said. “I could stay here forever.”  
  
Brad had turned to look at her. “Yeah?” he said, like he didn’t quite believe it—and abruptly, Claire didn’t want him to.   
  
“Yeah,” she said, “because I’m scared to think about the walk back,” shading her eyes and grinning as he groaned.  
  
_I should have just told him_, she thinks. _Told him what? Oh, shut the fuck up, Claire, you _know_—_  
  
She blinks. The overhead light is on; it’s giving Claire a headache. She should have asked Christina to turn it off on her way out. She should have gone to sleep hours ago, so she wouldn’t be thinking about any of this—except she _is_ thinking about it now, she can’t stop. She’s thinking about the sun slanting through the window the morning after—well. The morning after. About Brad’s hand on her hip; the gentle way he’d kissed her temple. How happy he’d seemed; how unhappy she’d made him barely half an hour later, unhappy because...   
  
She blinks. She turns onto her side.   
  
She has that feeling like her leg has gone to sleep—like it’s starting to wake up. Except her leg is her life, and the waking up is starting to hurt. The flatness is receding. _I should have told him, _she thinks. _Told him what. You know—_  
  
_At least told him sorry, _she thinks suddenly, and feels it like pins and needles in her chest, prickling so uncomfortably she almost can’t think anything else at all.   
  
If she goes back to the Cape next summer and Brad hates her—  
  
He said he wouldn’t.  
  
If she goes back and he does, though—or he acts like he doesn’t know her when they run into each other around town—or if he’s gone—  
  
She bolts up in bed and rummages around in the mess of sheets for her phone. For a moment after she finds it, she’s not sure what she’s gonna do—and then she’s scrolling through her contacts and hitting call, pressing it to her face, breathing hard until—  
  
“Oh my _God_,” Molly says, “you actually used your fucking phone, I think I’m gonna have a heart attack.”  
  
Wherever she is, it’s loud. Claire can hear music, people hollering, the deep regular sound of a bassline beneath it all—the kinda party Claire’ll see seventeen Instagram stories about in the morning. She probably should have assumed Molly would be out on a Thursday night. “Sorry,” she says, “if it’s a bad time—”  
  
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Molly hollers. “Hang on.” After a minute, the background noise starts to recede, and when Molly speaks again, her voice is clearer, closer. “I’m just at some stupid party, who gives a shit. What’s up?”  
  
“Nothing,” Claire says. She has a lump in her throat all of a sudden and she’s not sure why.  
  
Molly must be able to tell, though. “Are you okay?” she says sharply. "Do I have to come beat someone up?"  
  
“What? No. That's your first instinct? I’m fine,” Claire says.   
  
“You literally, like, _called_ me,” Molly says, “so—”  
  
“I know how to use a phone, I don’t know why everyone is always saying...” Claire starts—and then she’s thinking about Brad outside the diner, months and months ago, saying, “Do you know how a phone works? Because I told you to call me—” which she hadn’t—he _had_ told her and she just—hadn’t—and—  
  
“Claire, you’re freaking me out,” Molly says.  
  
“I’m just,” Claire says. It’s hard to get a breath. “Molly, I think I really screwed some stuff up.”  
  
There's a beat. “Well, good news,” Molly says finally. “I’m a friggin’ fixer. Just tell me what the hell _happened_.”  
  
It’s hard to get the first part out, but after Molly doesn’t even say _I told you so_, it starts to come easier, and then it’s all spilling out so fast that Claire almost can’t stop it, so that by the time she’s explained everything, she feels breathless, wrung out.   
  
“I thought August was _boring_,” Molly says.  
  
"I know."  
  
"But you were—"  
  
“Uh huh,” Claire says.  
  
“Like—all _summer_,” Molly says.   
  
“Yeah,” Claire says.  
  
“I mean, you two actually—”  
  
“Molly, _please,_” Claire says, pressing a hand to her face.  
  
“Okay, okay,” Molly says, “it’s just a lot to process.”  
  
There’s a long pause. Claire can hear faint whooping in the background, the sound of people coming or going from whatever party Molly’s abandoned in favor of this call.   
  
“I know you’re not gonna believe a single thing I try to tell you about Brad,” Molly says after a long moment. “So I’m gonna tell you something about yourself instead, okay?”  
  
“Okay,” Claire says, blinking up at her ceiling. The phone is hot against her ear.  
  
“You just make things up,” Molly says.   
  
“I—”  
  
“Make things _up_,” Molly says again. “You just—think you know how things are, and once you think you know, you don’t listen to anything anyone says that might mean you _don’t_ know, you know?”  
  
Trying to work through that one is giving Claire a headache. “Molly—”  
  
“You just think you know what people want,” Molly says, “and—what they want from _you_. Like, you think people don’t want anything from you. Even when they do—you just don’t believe it. You, like. I dunno. You ignore evidence.”   
  
Claire doesn’t say anything.  
  
“I don’t know why,” Molly says, almost apologetically.   
  
Claire wants to say _no I don’t._ She wants, kind of, to hang up the phone. Instead, she finds herself thinking suddenly, against her will, about Molly texting her all those times last year, saying, _Come visit_, and how Claire had thought—what had she thought? That she’d show up and Molly would be—embarrassed of her or something. That if things were at all different than the way they’d always been—summer friends, one singular context, one limited mode of engagement—the whole friendship would fall apart.   
  
“So basically I’m an asshole,” Claire says.  
  
Molly laughs. “No way,” she says. “You’re like—the best. But did you ask that guy even one single time what he wanted, or did you just tell him what you thought he wanted to hear?”  
  
Claire blinks at the ceiling. Her heart is starting to race.   
  
“I gotta go, Moll,” she says slowly.  
  
“I bet,” Molly says.   
  
“But—”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I could get the train up,” Claire says. She doesn’t know why it’s so hard to say; why it feels like going out on a limb even though… she doesn’t _know. _“Next month. If—”   
  
“Yeah,” Molly says, “you friggin’ _could_. And I’m gonna feed you shots of tequila until you sing like a canary about every last detail—”  
  
“Thanks, Molly,” Claire says, and hangs up on her.  
  
She lies in bed for a minute, mind churning. Then, moving deliberately, she thumbs her and Brad’s text thread open. The most recent message is still the one she sent him from the plane. Her hands had been shaking when she sent that one too. Maybe someday she’ll message him again without feeling like she’s actively about to puke.   
  
_Hey_, she types.   
  
It’s probably stupid to do this right now, since she’s worked up, and since she’s not sure what she even wants to say except that she’s sorry—not just for what she said the morning after but for all of it—for wanting stuff she never said; for not asking flat out what he wanted. For being selfish in ways she hadn’t known she could be.   
  
_I know we haven’t talked in a while_, she types slowly. _I know that’s my fault. I shouldn’t have. _Delete. _I wanted. _Delete. _I’m sorry_, she says finally. _I was a shitty friend. I thought I could be cool about everything and I couldn’t. But I don’t wish we hadn’t done it. I wanted to do it. I lied when I said I wasn’t waiting for the perfect situation. I was. You were it. _  
  
She sends the message.   
  
For a moment, she sits there staring at her phone, reading and rereading what she wrote, half waiting for a reply to pop up. None does. That’s fine—even if he never replies, that’s fine, she thinks, so tired she almost can’t see straight—turns the lights off, and goes to bed.   
  
  
  
Claire and Christina both have section the next morning at nine. Christina’s in an awful mood the whole way across campus—“Stop acting so healthful and virtuous,” she tells Claire, looking like she might puke in a bush at any second.  
  
“I’m just _walking_,” Claire says, patting Christina’s shoulder sympathetically as she groans.   
  
Claire had half thought she’d wake up sweating and panicked this morning, but mostly she feels fine. When she checked her phone first thing, Brad hadn’t responded, and he still hasn’t. She manages to pay attention in class anyway—she feels more alert than she has in weeks, even with her phone heavy and silent in her pocket. Christina props herself up against a wall and sits with her pen poised motionless on her notebook for the better part of an hour; Claire takes notes for both of them.   
  
Afterwards, they leave the building very slowly. “I’m delicate,” Christina says.  
  
“I know,” Claire says.  
  
“I’m dying,” Christina says.  
  
“I know,” Claire repeats, holding the door for her. It’s not a bad day to die: the sun is shining and there’s the barest hint of autumn in the air. The leaves have just barely begun to change—when Claire glances out across the quad, everything is green save a few tentative branches here and there, glints of color so unobtrusive they mostly register as glitches—little hiccups in the green.   
  
“I mean, I could literally drop dead at any second,” Christina says.  
  
“Just don’t drop on me,” Claire says. Campus is never very busy on Friday mornings, but there are still people moving between buildings, a contingent sunbathing on the lawn. A couple of guys are playing frisbee at the nearest end of the quad; Claire glances around, thinking about which way they should walk to avoid getting hit in the back of the head, and has just about determined that they should go round the front of the building even though it’s out of the way when two people who’d been chatting in the walkway shake hands and part ways, and behind them—  
  
“Christina,” Claire says, reaching out abruptly for Christina’s arm.  
  
“What,” Christina says, “are you finally interested in exhibiting a little sympathy?”  
  
“No,” Claire says blankly. All the strange, uncharacteristic calm of her morning has passed; her stomach has dropped to her feet. “It’s…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“That’s Brad, right?” Claire says, pointing to the walkway. Her hand is mortifyingly shaky; she drops it quickly, presses it to her stomach, taking a deep breath.  
  
“Brad?” Christina looks around. “Was he supposed to—oh.”  
  
“Oh,” Claire repeats, blinking. It’s not a mirage, she’s pretty sure. It’s not a hallucination. Brad’s wearing a threadbare pink t-shirt she’s seen him in a hundred times before, his favorite faded baseball cap, and he’s here—actually here—and he’s _seen_ her—she’s pretty sure he’s seen her. As she watches, he raises a hand and starts moving towards the steps.   
  
“You didn’t know he was coming?” Christina says.  
  
“No,” Claire says.  
  
Christina groans. “I can’t believe I’m sick for this,” she says, as Claire makes herself move down the stairs even though her legs feel like lead.   
  
Brad looks—well, good. He always does. As she approaches, he slips his hands into his pockets, then pulls them out, crosses his arms, uncrosses them. It’s so rare to see Brad out of his depth that it makes Claire feel even shakier herself.   
  
“What are you doing here?” Claire says blankly once she’s close enough to be heard, but Brad’s already saying, rote and rapid, like he’d practiced the line before showing up, “You gotta let me talk, okay?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“For once, you gotta let me get a word in edgewise—”  
  
“I _do_ let you talk—”  
  
“No, Claire, you don’t,” Brad says, “because if you did, I woulda said all kinds of things you ain’t ever let me say, and if I don’t get to say ‘em now—I don’t _care_ if this ain’t what you meant, okay?”  
  
“Brad, how did you even know where I’d be—”  
  
“I’m not hung up on my fucking ex, Claire,” Brad snaps. When she stops talking in surprise, he sighs hugely and drops his head back, pulling his hat off with one hand. For the first time, she notices how tired he looks: dark circles under his eyes. “Jesus,” he says.  
  
“You… okay,” Claire says.  
  
Brad tips his head forward again and squints at her. “Oh, okay?” he says. “That’s all you got? Okay?”  
  
“…You didn’t break up that long ago,” Claire says after a moment.  
  
“_God_,” Brad groans. “She was right.”  
  
“Who was right?” Claire says, bewildered.  
  
“Fucking Molly,” Brad says.   
  
“Molly—”  
  
Brad puts his hand up: stop. “I can’t,” he says. “I cannot talk about Molly right now. I can_not_. You know what time I got up this morning, Claire? Six ay _em_. Six ay em, check my phone, gotta text that means I gotta get right in the car and drive all the way to fucking Cambridge to tell you that I thought you were smart cause you go to Harvard and everything but I guess you’re not because I’m so fucking far from being hung up on Sarah—Jesus Christ, Claire. You drive me fucking crazy.”  
  
“Sorry,” Claire says, dazed. “You could have just _called_.”  
  
Brad snorts. “No, Claire, I couldn’t. I couldn’t just call because—that’s what you thought all summer?”  
  
“That you cared about your breakup? Yes,” Claire says. Her face feels hot. She’s vaguely aware that Christina is still loitering nearby, and that people are streaming around them on the walkway, probably annoyed at the inconvenience, but she can’t make herself move.   
  
“That I _cared_—okay,” Brad says. He’s crushing his cap in one hand.   
  
“Brad—”  
  
“You gotta let me talk,” Brad says, “or else I’m gonna lose my mind and—I don’t know what I’ll do, probably move to Alaska or something, just, hop on a crab boat and boom, out to sea, okay? Don’t say anything. Just nod.”  
  
Claire opens her mouth—then closes it. She nods.  
  
“So, yeah,” Brad says, “I had a breakup. It ain’t the best thing that ever happened to me but it ain’t the worst, and it wasn’t such a huge fucking surprise that six months later I’m still crying myself to sleep at night—I mean, I didn’t cry myself to sleep at all. I didn’t even cry. Sometimes you break up with someone and it just ain’t the end of the world, cause they weren’t the person you were supposed to be with, okay?”  
  
“Yeah, but—”  
  
“But I ain’t talked to you in a month and _that_ is killing me,” Brad says, which shuts Claire right up again. “I mean, do you get that? Can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t think straight killing me, thinking about what I shoulda—fuck. What I shoulda done different, or whether you really did wish it hadn’t happened, when it was just—the greatest fucking summer of my life, babe.”  
  
Claire swallows. Brad’s looking her right in the eye, like it doesn’t scare him at all, saying it.   
  
“And I know you said it wasn’t anything—”  
  
“_You_ said that,” Claire bursts out, but Brad just pulls a face.  
  
“Okay, so everyone said stuff,” he says, “but you didn’t wanna tell no one—”  
  
“I didn’t want to tell _Molly—” _  
  
“Because you were embarrassed—”  
  
“Of _you_?”  
  
“Claire, Jesus,” Brad says, frowning at her, “you really can’t let me finish pouring my fucking heart out here or what?”   
  
“Your _heart_?” Claire says.  
  
Brad throws his hands up. “Yeah, Claire, my heart! What the hell do you think’s going on here? You think I’m driving up and down the East Coast for my health? I’m sorry, okay? I thought you didn’t want nothing serious so I said that was good for me, but it wasn’t, and unless I read the damn text wrong, which I dunno, I don’t read _great_ but I looked at it about a hundred times, so—I think it wasn’t good for you either, right? And I swear to God I would’ve kissed you years ago if I thought, even a little bit—but I didn’t, okay?”  
  
Claire doesn’t say anything.   
  
“Okay?” Brad repeats.  
  
“…Uh huh,” Claire says thickly.  
  
“So… that’s it. You can say whatever you want now,” he tells her.  
  
He looks tired. He looks hopeful. He’s looking at her like she’s the only thing in the world worth looking at. Claire’s so fucking crazy about him she can’t stand it.  
  
“I thought you were hung up on Sarah,” Claire says carefully—her eyes are prickling embarrassingly—“because you’re the best guy I know. And because when you care about something, you care about it in the… in the best way. And you don’t give up just because it’s hard or… you just don’t give up. You keep caring. And I always thought she was really lucky to have that. To have you. Because if you cared about me like that…”  
  
Claire doesn’t know how to explain what happens to Brad as she’s talking. Something changes on his face, or in the set of his shoulders. She’s not sure. All she knows is that by the time she trails off, he’s looking at her so softly and so knowingly that it makes her wanna shove her face into his neck and hide there forever, safe and warm.   
  
“Like I said,” he says gently, “stupid”—and she’s not sure whether he reaches out first, or whether she’s already moving, tripping forward, but somehow he’s wrapping his arms around her, gathering her close, pressing a hand to her cheek and tilting her chin up. “Do you get it already?” he says. “Or do I gotta explain more?”  
  
Claire thinks about Brad waking up this morning, reading her message, bolting out of bed and driving straight to Boston. She thinks about that morning after, too—the way she’d woken up in his arms, the way he’d kissed the back of her neck and tucked her close against him, how he’d been holding her all night, even though it was hot—like he didn’t wanna let her go.   
  
Maybe Brad has a point. Maybe she _shouldn’t_ be at Harvard.  
  
“I think I’m catching on,” she says, and kisses him.  
  
People are still skirting around them; Claire doesn’t care anymore. She lets Brad crush her close, petting her face, her hair, kissing her so sweet and rough and frantic she thinks her knees might give out. That’s fine, she thinks dimly. Brad’s holding her. Who cares what happens to her stupid knees.  
  
“And I swear,” Brad says, pulling back, breathless, “I’m a real good boyfriend, okay?”  
  
“Okay,” Claire says hazily, swaying after him.   
  
“I know you maybe don’t want any distractions while you’re trying to become a rocket scientist or whatever—”  
  
“A what?”  
  
“Well, _I_ dunno what they do at Harvard,” Brad says, “but I mean, I ain’t a lot of trouble.”  
  
“You’re—”  
  
“I mean, I can be, but I won’t be for you,” Brad says. He strokes his thumb across her cheek. “No drama. Real supportive. I swear to God.”  
  
“That’s really good to know, Brad,” Claire says seriously. “I’m actually trying to make out with you right now—” Brad laughs abruptly “—but when I’m finished, you can keep reciting your boyfriend resume for me, okay?”  
  
“Fair enough,” Brad says. He leans in again, then pauses a breath away her lips. “I ain’t got a yacht yet, either,” he says, grinning slowly. “I know that’s a big deal for you. But I got about seven jobs, so gimme a couple years and I’ll see what I can do, okay?”  
  
“Deal,” Claire says, squinting against the bright morning sunshine, and kisses him again to seal it.


End file.
